THE SHEEP OF HIS PASTURE

A SERMON FOR GOOD SHEPHERD SUNDAY

When our Lord described himself as the Good Shepherd, he left it up to us to realize that if he is the Good Shepherd, then there must also be bad shepherds.  Christ founded a church, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of which we are the members.  This church through the ages has had a multitude of shepherds (otherwise known as ‘pastors’), some of them good and some of them bad.  During the entire history of the Church though, it is clear who are the sheep…  We are the sheep.  Whether our pastors are good or bad shepherds, we the people remain ‘the sheep’.  As it says in Psalm 94, which we read at Matins every day, “He is the Lord our God; and we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”  Note that we are the sheep of God’s pasture.  While the Church may have a succession of popes, good and bad, we remain the sheep not of this pope’s pasture or that pope’s pasture, but of God’s pasture.

We know God because we have the faith.  “I know my sheep,” said our Lord, “and my sheep know me.”  And like good sheep, we follow Christ, our Good Shepherd.  And if we are truly good sheep, we will follow his successors who are also good shepherds, pastors who follow in their Master’s footsteps, so that by following them, we follow Christ himself to salvation.  But we will not follow a bad pastor who leads us away from that Master.

Unfortunately, sheep have some good qualities and some bad qualities.  They are generally docile, gentle animals, who lovingly and loyally follow their shepherd as he leads them to pastures green beside the still waters.  In this, we are meant to do as they do, staying as close to them as we possibly can, following them as they follow Christ.  We obey their commands and loyally follow them through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, as they keep us safe from the devil, the world, and our own fallen nature.  Alas, sheep also have a reputation for being rather stupid, and sometimes they wander off, as they go “astray, every one to his own way”, as Isaiah prophesied.  They have even been known to follow bad shepherds who pretend to be good shepherds!  We all know a few of these sheep.  They remain the “people of God and the sheep of his pasture,” but unfortunately, they are taken in by the pretenders who do not feed them with true doctrine and right morals, and instead lead them away from the very God the poor sheep are trying so hard to follow.

These would-be pastors all pretend to work for the Good Shepherd, but in reality they feed us with grass that, even though it may sometimes taste better, is in fact, poisoned.  So many of the sheep are tempted by the nicer taste of this grass, grass that lets them do whatever they want and believe whatever they want.  Unfortunately they graze themselves sick on it on this toxic but pleasant-tasting grass.  In the Our Father, we make the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.”  As you know, one of those bad shepherds has recently mutilated this prayer with the excuse that God cannot possibly “lead us into temptation.”  He forgets (or does he?) that Christ’s successors in the papacy, his Vicar on earth, can most certainly lead the sheep into temptation.  We should pray the Our Father with this in mind, and pray for the restoration of a good shepherd, a worthy Vicar of Christ, to the See of Peter, one who will not lead the sheep into temptation.

When our Lord rose from the dead and spent forty more days in this world before his Ascension into heaven, he prepared the world for the coming of his Holy Spirit, who would comfort the world through his Church.  He took aside the chief of the apostles, St. Peter, and he told him that upon this Rock he would build his Church.  But before he did this, he first asked him point blank, “Peter, lovest thou me?”  He had to ask the question, because after all, this was the same St. Peter who had denied him three times.  St. Peter was a little upset at the question, but soon realized why he was being asked.  And he replied to the question that yes, of course, he loved our Lord.  “Feed my sheep,” was Christ’s command in response.  And again he asked Peter if he loved him.  And then a third time.   Three times Christ asked him, three times Peter assured him of his loyalty and love, and three times, Christ commanded him to feed his sheep.

Our Lord wanted to make absolutely sure of Peter, to confirm to the rest of us that Peter and his successors would be worthy successors to himself.  These men would be the Vicars of Christ, the substitutes for Christ on earth, the successors to the Good Shepherd himself, worthy Pastors of the flock.  They would look after the rest of us, the sheep, and make sure we were led by their good example, fed with the right doctrine, fed with the truths of the Faith and the graces of valid sacraments. Most importantly of all, they would feed us with the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar by which he would unite us to himself through the Holy Mass that he gave us.

Peter’s successors, the vicars of Christ on earth, the popes, have truly been the Vicars of Jesus Christ himself, human and fallible sometimes in their behavior, but always divinely infallible in their transmission of the true faith to the sheep.  Since Vatican II of course, they have abolished this true Mass that had been successfully transmitted intact from the Last Supper to the 1960s.  They have renounced their role of feeding the sheep with true doctrine.  We have had profoundly bad shepherds who have led many of the sheep astray. Finally this year, the current shepherd of the flock has renounced the title “Vicar of Christ” entirely, consigning it to a footnote in the 2020 Pontifical Yearbook as a “historical title” only.  It is good, at least, that the pretense is now officially over.  Jorge Mario Bergoglio (for that is now apparently his only title) is so obviously un-Christlike in his beliefs and actions that he has stopped pretending to be anything other than the heretic he is.

For us of course, it makes no difference.  We didn’t need him to renounce titles he never held in the first place to know that he is a bad shepherd.  But what about those other poor lambs who struggle to make sense of the utter contradiction of having a heretic as head of the Catholic Church.  Let us hope that good sense, the sensus catholicus, will finally prevail, and they will force out this fake pastor of souls, calling for the return of a truly Good Shepherd who will lead us out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, back beside the still waters where, by the grace of God, he will restore our souls.