Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday, we have heard, we have seen and witnessed the great and boundless love of our Lord and God, who is our Shepherd and Guide, the One who provides us all with all the things that we need. He is the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep, and cared for nothing else than the well-being of His sheep, of His flock.
From the first reading today, taken from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, God made it clear through His servant Jeremiah that He would bring back His people to His presence, just like a shepherd gathering back his lost sheep. He would punish all those irresponsible and bad shepherds who had failed in their duty to govern the people of God and lead them in righteousness.
The shepherds that God had appointed over the people at that time, the kings and their associates, failed to live up to the tasks entrusted to them. Rather than leading their people by example, they have abused their power and positions of privilege, which led to great sorrow and suffering for the people, who were therefore leaderless and without guidance, lost and trapped in the darkness of this world.
But God did not let His people to suffer alone without hope, or without succour. On the other hand, through His generous love and care which He had shown us, He endeavoured to help us, for He is a true and good shepherd, whose eyes, mind, heart and attention is always on us, His sheep. He therefore promised the coming of a Saviour, a King who would reign forever over the people who were once scattered over the nations, and the Shepherd shall make them whole again.
And all these were fulfilled through Jesus, our Lord, the Messiah, Saviour of all mankind, Son of God, the Heir of David, the King and Good Shepherd who came to announce to all the fulfilment of God’s faithful promise to us. And He did it not just by words, but also through example. He taught the people, that God is the Good Shepherd, and He is that Good Shepherd, who led His people out of darkness and into the light.
In the Gospel today, we see how Jesus showed pity on the people who followed Him, because they were truly like ‘lambs scattered without a shepherd’, and this was the reality at that time, for as long as years and ages had passed, the people of God had no guide or destination to guide them, for all the shepherds who had come and go from them, all have not been good shepherds.
An example was the Pharisees, the elders and the teachers of the Law during the time of Jesus. These people were respected greatly by the people and they were also feared, for they policed the actions of the people and enforced with great severity the laws of Moses. However, as they enforced these laws, they failed to understand the true purpose and meaning of those rules, and end up following them blindly.
These shepherds appointed over the people of God have also not done what they were expected to do. They did not care about them and their well-being, and instead, they cared about themselves first. They worried more about their own stomachs and their own concerns first before that of the others entrusted to their care. This is the attitude of bad and irresponsible shepherds whom the Lord had rebuked through the prophet Jeremiah as we heard in the first reading today.
Those bad shepherds did not care for the sheep entrusted to them, and at the very first indication of danger, they would run away and let the sheep be destroyed, for they had no love for the sheep. But the Good Shepherd loves all of His sheep equally and with perfect love, so that through the love which He had shown them, the sheep may be reunited to their Shepherd in love.
This is what Jesus, our Good Shepherd had done. He had led by example, loving all of us from the depths of His heart, even to the point of laying down His own life for the sake of His people. He shed His Blood for the people, dying on the cross for the sake of all of us, for we have been swallowed by the darkness of this world, and have been defiled with the wickedness of our sins, and yet our Lord and Shepherd went forth to reclaim us from that darkness and back into the light.
Remember what Jesus told His disciples about the parable of the lost sheep? In that parable Jesus told how if a shepherd has a hundred sheep and one of them is lost, the shepherd would go and make use of all within his ability and disposal to regain the one who has been lost, and leave the other safe ninety-nine sheep behind. That is what a good shepherd would do, and what our Lord who is our Good Shepherd had done for our sake.
We have been lost, and naturally we would have gone on to annihilation, had it not for the Lord who had shown His mercy to us all. He stretched forth His hands and reached out to us, and He called on us to repent and to change our sinful ways. If we continue to walk on this path of sin, what lies there in the end for us will only be despair and eternal suffering of hell.
If our Lord had done so much for us, to gather us back as His sheep, to be part of His flock once again, then we too should make a conscious effort to reach out to His extended hands, which He had given to us for our salvation. And there is yet also another dimension to today’s Scripture readings as well. All of us have been saved by the Lord and we have become part of His blessed flock, gathered from among the nations, and yet there are still so many others that lie beyond the salvation He has given.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we too are shepherds to one another, and especially to all those lost sheep still lying around deep in the darkness of this world. We have the share of responsibility to gather all the lost sheep of the Lord, calling them to reunion with our Good Shepherd, who will then bring us all together in love and give us His grace. We have to inspire many others to come to our Lord by our own actions, words and deeds.
If we do not do things and say things in the way that would identify us as those belonging to the Lord, then who would believe us and who would come to the presence of the Lord? They would remain lost and then the responsibility for their loss would hung heavily on our heads. We have this responsibility to help each other, and to guide one another to reach out to the Lord, our loving and devoted Shepherd, whose gaze is always directed on us.
May the Lord, our Good Shepherd, guide us in our lives, so that in all that we do, He may help us to keep our paths straight that we will remain always in His favour and in His grace, and may all of us embrace the love which our Shepherd had shown us, His lost sheep now lost no more but had been found. Let us forever live in the grace of our Lord who will bless us and keep us in His grace. God be with us all, now and forever. Amen.
