GIVEN AT OUR LADY OF GOOD REMEDY CHAPEL, LIZTON, INDIANA
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2018
Many years ago, I used to work on Fifth Avenue in New York. It’s true that Manhattan is the city that never sleeps, but then, there are times that it’s more wide awake than others. One such time is around five o’clock in the afternoon when thousands of offices turn off their computers and send their teeming flocks of employees down the elevator to pour out onto the street below. This mass of humanity heads for the nearest subway station, and off they go, to Grand Central or Penn Station, to take their commuter trains out into the distant suburbs.
I call it a mass of humanity, and yet it resembles nothing of humanity. As the traffic light turns red, this single-minded mob comes to a stop, only to move forward again in perfect unison when the light turns back to green. It looks more like a coordinated stampede of well-dressed animals, all following each other with blank expressions like a mindless flock of sheep. But let’s face it, isn’t this what we all do at some time or other? We act like sheep. How many times have we just followed along blindly after others. It would be okay if the ones we’re following are heading to a good place and know how to get there. But be careful! If the sheep we’re so blindly following get lost, then so do we. “All we like sheep have gone astray,” says the prophet Isaiah; “we have turned every one to his own way.”
In other words, there are dangers in being a sheep. If we blindly follow someone who is equally ignorant, someone who is just another sheep, then we are in peril, perhaps of our lives, or even of our very souls. And that, my friends, is why God gave us shepherds.
His Excellency Bishop Paul Petko was one such shepherd. He was our spiritual leader and protector, and we were the sheep of his pasture. Like good sheep, we followed him to this place among the thriving fields of corn in the middle of Indiana, and here he provided us with a spiritual home, a place where we could bring our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows and our sins, and lay them all on his shoulder in the confessional. He gave us a place of peace here in this Chapel of Our Lady of Good Remedy, a quiet harbor from the roaring waters of life. He restored our souls with the sacraments of Absolution and Communion, he confirmed us in the truth and taught us the ways of righteousness. And when the storms came and we were in danger of falling away from the faith or losing our moral compass, or perhaps just straying away from Mass, we could always count on his steady hand to hold us up and guide us back to the right path. Here was a quiet man, quiet yet unwavering in his commitment to his flock as he led us towards God.
All those tens of thousands of sheep out there in the world, milling around without direction, without any sense of where they are going or why they’re going there, what a sad waste of humanity that they were not acquainted with our bishop here. What a terrible shame that they never had the opportunity to experience his compassionate guiding hand, bringing them the knowledge of their final end, and providing them with the means to get there. While we enjoyed all the benefits his kind heart could give us, those poor souls still do not know the reasons why they should lead a godly life by knowing, loving and serving their Creator. Sadly for them, they blindly follow the sheep around them, and they “know not whither they go.” Take a long careful look at them, those people of the world who know not what they do, and as our blessed Lord did on the road to the end of his own life, let us ask the Father’s forgiveness for them.
And then, let us turn to ourselves. We have followed our shepherd here, some of us for many years. But today, we can follow him no longer. We are sheep without a shepherd, and as we bid him farewell, we find ourselves asking him the same question that St. Peter asked our blessed Lord,: Quo vadis? “Whither goest thou?” And Bishop Petko’s silent reply is the same as our Lord gave to Peter: “Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.” And indeed we will. As the good abbot Saint Sylvester said, “I am what he was, and what he is I shall be.”
Meanwhile, what must we do? It is said that as the shepherd is struck, so the sheep are scattered. We suddenly find ourselves without our shepherd. He has indeed been struck down in the prime of life, and taken from us. What are we to do? Are we indeed to scatter, to go astray, every one to his own way? Have we learned nothing?
The Requiem Mass we attend today is the same Requiem Mass Bishop Petko said so many times for the repose of the faithful departed. The words of this Mass remind us that the departed run out not into nothingness but into God. There is a greater reality and a greater finality than death and that is the love and the compassion of God. We may not be immortal but God is. As the great English poet John Donne put it: “whom God loves, he loves to the end and not to their end and their death, but to His end, and His end is that He might love them more”.
If we learn nothing else from Bishop Petko, let it be the inevitability of our own death and judgment, which he continues, silently, to teach us today. That, like sheep, we are mortal, and we shall all one day meet death. We are dust, and unto dust we shall return. In the midst of life we are in death. This is his lesson today, and yes, he is still teaching us. We have before us his life of service to God, to the true Church of Christ, and to us his flock. It is a wonderful example for us to follow, and if we continue to follow it, we shall not go astray.
There are plenty of questions that are still unanswered, and about which we may legitimately wonder. Will Mass continue in this chapel? Who will say it? And so forth. We must remember that the times in which we live are not normal times. The diocese will not just send another pastor along to replace the one we have lost. Priests are not a dime a dozen any more, and the ones that are out there must be carefully vetted for validity, education and moral character. It’s up to us now, the sheep, to find our own shepherds, and nothing is certain, nothing can be taken for granted any more. Our complacency is shattered like a broken mirror, into smithereens.
However, this is a time not for panic or even anxiety, but for the tranquil reliance on the Providence of God. As soul by soul and silently the heavenly bounds increase, we bid farewell to our shepherd, but not to our faith. Those truths have been passed down through the the Church that Christ founded, through the apostles and his successors, through Bishop Petko, and to us. If we stay true to that Church and remain within her sheepfold, we will always have a shepherd, the Good Shepherd himself in fact. For “the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
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