It's hard, being a shepherd

Shepherds, the Lord says this: Trouble for the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Shepherds ought to feed their flock, yet you have fed on milk, you have dressed yourselves in wool, you have sacrificed the fattest sheep, but failed to feed the flock. You have failed to make weak sheep strong, or to care for the sick ones, or bandage the wounded ones. You have failed to bring back strays or look for the lost. On the contrary, you have ruled them cruelly and violently. For lack of a shepherd they have scattered, to become the prey of any wild animal; they have scattered far. Well then, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, I swear it – it is the Lord who speaks – Since my flock has been looted and for lack of a shepherd is now the prey of any wild animal, since my shepherds have stopped bothering about my flock, since my shepherds feed themselves rather than my flock, in view of all this, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. The Lord says this: I am going to call the shepherds to account. I am going to take my flock back from them and I shall not allow them to feed my flock. In this way the shepherds will stop feeding themselves. I shall rescue my sheep from their mouths; they will not prey on them any more. For the Lord says this: “I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view."

- Ezekiel Ch 24.

The Lord is coruscating in his contempt for shepherds who do not care for their flock...  His flock... as they are charged to do.

My first reaction is to think immediately of negligent clergy who ensure that they themselves live high on the hog but hold the flock in less than the love with which God loves them, for notice has surely been served upon them. But wait - what about me? Am I also a shepherd, even a part-time one? Am I asked to care for God's people? 

Yes. When I pray the I confess, I ask my brothers and sisters... the other members of the Church... to pray for me to the Lord our God, because I am a sinner, and I undertake also to pray for them, because they need my prayers just as I need theirs. We are shepherds of each other. This is what members of the Church are to each other, and must also be to His other sheep, those not of this fold.

We are not always able physically to come to the material aid of the Lord's sheep, spread all over the world and mostly unknown to us personally, but just as at Mass I ask for their prayers in my need, I am duty bound to pray to the Lord for them, in their need. Pray constantly.

But how can I see the Lord's lambs wounded, scattered, His baptised members lost, wandering, cast out to be the prey of any wild animal, and do nothing? How can I see His other sheep, not of this fold but whom He also loves, unshepherded, frightened, unfed and with no fold that is safe, in which they might find rest?

St Teresa of Avila writes:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours; 

no hands but yours; no feet but yours. 

Yours are the eyes through which 

Christ must look out on the world with compassion.

Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. 

Yours are the hands with which He is to bless people now.

So, on hearing the Lord say, “I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view," we recognise His mandate to us, to us who are His eyes, His feet, His hands, now, to be shepherds. 

'Love one another, as I have loved you.'

I begin by praying for those sheep who are of this fold but have been lost by inadequate shepherds whose hearts have grown cold and hard, or who lack mercy, or are blind, and pray to be allowed to help bring them home. I try to do nothing to alienate them from the loving Good Shepherd by my own lack of faith and fidelity to Him.

I look next for those not of this fold and try, by living as faithfully and closely as I can to the Lord, to give them some sense that the love of the Good Shepherd is caring for them even now.

I pray that I may be made merciful, as the Father is merciful, and that I may love both sheep and shepherds who have gone astray and cannot find their way home, but especially the shepherds who need rescuing. God love them. God help them. 

I bless those many good shepherds who, at the sacrifice of their private lives and loves and so much more, care as tenderly for His sheep as He would... because He asks it of them, because He has no hands on earth now but theirs. 

At the foot of the Cross

There stood by the foot of the Cross, Mary, the disciple whom Jesus loved, Mother, Father, my brother John, and me. In life, Mother feared it was true. Father hoped it might be true. John always believed.

Jesus was shivering with shock and cold, dying, in appalling pain, his breathing rattling in his chest. Mother knew what he was going through. She had nursed many people through the painful last hours of life. Father, who loved her, had heard her breathing like this as she herself died. John breathed like this as he was dying, too. I watched them all die. Now I was watching my Lord die, out of love for each of us.

Jesus looked at Mother with love in his agonised face. 'Because she loved much, much is forgiven her. Needy, uncertain Sheila, it is time to be loved just as you are. Come to me.'

He looked at Father. 'Another doubting Thomas. He too loved much, gave everything. Come to me, doubting Tom. You can stop thinking now, and rest content in me.'

'And John. Stumbling, defiant, wild, passionate John. Beneath it all, a true heart. Come to  me, John.'

And me? I am the friend from His childhood.

'Ah, you came,' He whispered.

His Mother looked into the troubled face of my mother and then opened her arms wide and embraced her, nodding to signify that she understood her sister, understood all.

Then she smiled up into the face of my father, raising her hand tenderly to his cheek.

She then put a kiss in the the palm of her hand and, reaching up, rested her hand on my brother’s head.

Finally she smiled at me, the same smile as when He and I crept into her kitchen when she was making raisin bread.

Mary, holy virgin, mother of us all, pray for us and guide us to your Beloved and Risen Son. Pray for healing for me. Never let me be parted from Him, or from you.

Mother, Father, John, pray for me.

Holy Saturday

Mary waiting for the Resurrection
Lourdes, France, Way of the Cross, white marble, Maria de Faykod

A mother always knows. He was in her heart as He went down to Sheol. She knew. She knew His Godforsakenness. She was not in the same dreadful plight but she felt it, felt his fear and sorrow and loss in the place where God's love is not. A piercing sword in her heart. Indeed.

Did the Mother plead, now, with the Father for their Son? 'Let this bitter chalice pass from Him, but not my will but Thy Majesty's will be done'? 

He had to go where the God-forsaken and the forsaken-God are. To experience what they do, in order to be human, like us, in all things except sin. All things. To be very far from His Father, to be where those who run from the Father are, so that the farther they run from the Father, the more they run into the arms of the Son.

Shema, Ysrael. The Lord is One.

The Cross is truly Trinitarian. The all-loving Father shares everything with His Beloved Son in Whom the Spirit of Love dwells eternally, a Spirit of sympathy and love and of longing for all to know Love, again or for the first time.

‘Father, forgive them.’

Them?

Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. 

You risked all, in your humanity, for me. And lost?

I betrayed you. You abandoned all that you had: your Godhead, your human life, gave all until there was no more you could give. For me. And I betrayed you. My selfish desires were more important to me than Your love.

Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. 

But God raised You up in your humanity, to eternal life, on the third day. United eternally with Him in Divinity and now also in the humanity you share with us, eternally.

‘Where I am, you will be, too. You know the Way. I am the Way.’

O amazing love, O sweet condescension for our sake. O blessed gift.

Blessed be the God of Israel. He has visited His people and redeemed them.

Yes, I will go with you. Whither thou goest, I will go.

Jesus Mercy

All the deadly sins, Lord. Deadly. All. Knowingly. 

Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. 

'Yes. I have seen your sins. Every one. And I have redeemed you, paying the price of them. I have restored Justice both because I know of what you are made and because I am merciful.'

'Your name has been written in the palm of my hand since before you were made, because even then I loved you.

'I have cast your sins behind my back, and even when you forget me or shun me, I bear the wound of it in patience, because I guard you as the apple of my eye.

'Do not fear. My peace I give you.

'Give glory to My Father and your Father Who is in heaven, Who sees all.'

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel. He has visited His people and redeemed them.