The wolf, the bear, the lion and the Good Shepherd
The 4th Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd’s Sunday and as such it focuses us on the issue of Vocation. But the Good Shepherd looks after, guides and protects his flock. Protects them from what? From wolves, bears and lions! Whatever our vocation may be it will have need of good soil from which to grow, good order by which we receive in depth formation and a process of pruning that will make for strength and enable us to bear good fruit. However, around the vineyard of the Lord there are also predators who desire to come in so as to raid, pillage and destroy and they take the forms of the wolf, the bear and the lion! Against such predators the Lord supplies the protection and the weapons of the Good Shepherd, namely, the crook, the staff and the sling.
Sheepfold is where Christ the Shepherd gathers us i.e. the Church; so we are not in this parish by accident but by Christ’s call. A call that says “serve me here and now in the Lord’s vineyard” and that vineyard is this parish. It is where the Lord has called you to know him, love him and serve him. God wants to sow you in the soil of this parish, so that you may be formed to grow up straight and right, to be strengthened by being pruned and so to blossom by bearing much fruit.
Anyone who does not enter through this gate into the Sheepfold that is a parish is a thief. Do not be the thief who shops around, plays the tourist or wanders hither and thither from parish to parish making life-style and convenience the guiding principle of going to church. For a parishioner exists in and around his or her parish church just like the sheep that dwell in Our Lord’s sheepfold. St Gregory of Nyssa gives us a beautiful depiction of God use of creation to draw us into a life where the parish is the soil of our transfiguration and resurrection where Our Lord makes all things new:
In this creation the sun is a pure life; the stars are virtues: the air is candid behaviour; the sea is the depth and the riches of wisdom and knowledge. Grass and seeds are the divine teaching and sound doctrine which are picked and eaten by the people of the pasture, that is by God’s flock. The trees bearing fruit are the observance of the commandments [p. 584, Ad 1 on the Resurrection, The Divine Office II].
So come into the sheepfold of the parish where Christ has called you and put down roots, graze on the Lord’s pasture and serve your brothers and sisters of faith for Our Lord has given you to them and them to you! For you are not here in this parish by accident but by providence for the Lord has bought you, brought you and called you to serve him here and now [hic et nunc] in his sheepfold that is the parish.
Jesus is the gate by which we enter into good pasture; and good pasture is a figure of that fulness of life where we are fed by the fruits of our redemption which are the sacraments, they are the economy and sap of grace! The Hymn and Psalm of the Lord's My Shepherd presents what this economy of grace looks like using water, oil, pastures green, rod, staff, cup etc. It portrays a vibrant image of Jesus personally acting as our Good Shepherd through Word and Sacrament wherein is found a life lived and nourished by the food, power and wisdom of Christ that aids in the discernment of a vocation which occurs usually in a specific place and time that is the life found in a parish.
The word vocation comes from the Latin word ‘vocare’ which means to call. Those who belong to Our Lord listen and harken to his voice as the sheep hearkens to their shepherd; those who do not belong to the Lord do not harken to his voice. Instead they listen to the cacophony of voices of the world from Stalin, Hitler, Mao to our present day Political leaders, Media and Internet demagogues. A cacophony that drowns out the voice of the Good shepherd because it removes silence and puts in its place a din of noise and a host of images that distract the senses.
No vocation can be found in a world of noise and din, distractions of sounds and screens, dissipations by networking, surfing the net to gain affirmative emojis or by following the false shepherds or leaders of our time. For all things grow in silence and this is especially true of a vocation. Silence affords that stillness whereby reflection on what God has done and is doing in a person’s life can be known and recognised and thus they come to act like breadcrumbs and stepping stones that lead a person to discover his or her true call and real vocation.
As we need labourers for the harvest so do we need good shepherds. Christ calls us all to service in the vineyard, in the sheepfold of the parish. But he also calls in particular some young men to be priests. We can do much to block this call to the priesthood - scandalising talk about priests, rudeness at table, lack of family prayer, poor parental example and little teaching of the faith at home etc. For Parents too are called to be good shepherds who must watch over and guard the sheepfold of their children in their homes. As such, good shepherds of the family home can do something to enable the call to priesthood - grace at meals, daily prayer and seasonal devotions, sacred service, rosary in May, Family day for Sunday, attendance at Sunday Mass, time before the Blessed Sacrament on Wednesdays and going to Benediction. God can extend his call to others through our daily faithfulness to him.
However around the vineyard of the Lord there stalks the wolf, the bear and the lion.
There is a wolf that looks like one of us, sounds like one of us, seems nice and attractive too but it is wolf in sheep’s clothing. The name of this wolf today for many Catholics who have fallen away is called Significant Other Atheism! The wolf here manifests an imperialism over the hearts of young Catholic men and women. It is that imperialism of an attraction of opposites found in a boy friend or girl friend who is an atheist, yet is able to draw a Catholic into a life style of romance which at root is profoundly hedonistic and atheistic as it makes the Significant Other like unto God in its demands on a Catholic’s devotion, adoration and attention. Many such a Catholic walks away from their faith and declares themselves Atheists when all they have done is chosen a person of sexual attraction to be the god of a hedonist lifestyle and it is done with very little intellectual activity but a lot of sensual energy! It is often just an excuse for being a hedonist and practising immorality with an immature girl or boy and of course without any accountability - this is why the Pill is so fundamental to such super charged sensual relationships for without it the magic is soon dispelled!
There is the bear who denies God and lives only by appetites and passions and who possesses the will to power. So the Bear is at war with the world and with everyone it meets. It is an all devouring force of nature that brooks no opposition, does not engage in reason and sees others in terms of weakness or power. Consume the weak and manipulate the powerful is its motto. Examples of such were the French Revolution, the Communists of the Soviet union, the Maoists of China, the Khymer Rouge of Cambodia, the Nazis of Germany and the new Woke Generation all of which practice some kind of cultural vandalism, social thuggery that usually ends up in genocide.
Then there is the lion who is the first of all predators for as scripture says ‘Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour’ [1 Peter 5:8]. The enemy of the human race is Satan and it is here that we can bring into focus not just the protection but also the weapons of the Good Shepherd: the Crook that pulls us back from the brink as a shepherd pulls back the sheep that stray; the Staff by which the Good shepherd defends against robbers and thieves; and the sling by which the Good shepherd strikes down bears, wolves and lions. The sling is the Rosary; the Staff is the ability to withstand enemies of our Faith by reason; and the Crook the bond of love that anchors us to the safety and protection of the Church. You see predators always hunt down and consume the prey that gets separated from the herd and so too this what happens to us when we do not stay in fellowship and communion with Christ and his Church.
But what happens when the lion, the bear and the wolf are no longer outside but inside, in and amongst the sheepfold because Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Deacons and Laity have not preached the Gospel in the heart of the world but have turned traitors and now preach the Gospel of the world in the heart of the Church? This is what Cardinal Karol Woytyla in 1978 had warned us about when he said:
“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine Providence; it is trial which the whole Church, and the Polish Church in particular, must take up. It is a trial of not only our nation and the Church, but, in a sense, a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations.” [The Wall Street Journal, 9th November, 1978]
