The sheep is an animal that cannot survive on its own. It is a species with an “intelligence quotient close to the bottom of the scale,” said David Murray in HeadHeartHand.
So demanding that, as soon as it is born, it “violently sucks its mother’s udders for milk” and bleats for it cannot wait to fill its four stomachs.
So stubborn without a sense of direction, the shepherd has to tap a sheep gently and forcefully to make the herd move. Copycats, when one runs, the others follow. It cannot survive the onslaught of an enemy, for it has no claws, horns or fangs to defend itself.
But the sheep is a social animal, trusting, although unattractive, and can be trained to be loyal and devoted in its unique way. Remember the nursery rhyme: “Everywhere that Mary went, her lamb was sure to go.”
Shepherds all
During the time of Jesus, shepherding is not held in esteem as a job. But the shepherds, the first who responded to the angels and were Jesus’ first visitors, were “specially trained and purified.”
They were the caretakers of Passover lambs used as sacrifices, and wrapped newborn lambs in special swaddling clothes” in Migdal Eder or Tower of the Flock (www.patheos/com….12/was Jesus Born Away in a Manger at Migdal Eder).
David, the young shepherd who defeated Goliath, was acknowledged king after the death of Ish-Bosheth, one of the four sons of King Saul of Israel. Acclaimed as Israel’s greatest king, he composed 73 of the canonical psalms.
To Simon Peter, the most prominent of the twelve apostles, Jesus gave the instruction, “Tend my sheep…. Feed my sheep.” To Saint Peter, too, the first shepherd of Mother Church, Christ entrusted the key to the gate of heaven.
Peter instructed the apostles and leaders of the early Christian churches to be exemplars in shepherding their flock: “Tend the flock of God in your midst not by constraint but willingly.… And when the chief shepherd is revealed, you will receive the crown, the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:2,4).
To the 12 disciples, Jesus instructed them to “go to the last sheep of the house of Israel” rather than go to pagan territory or Samaritan town (Matthew 10:5-6).
The Catholic Church in the past 200 years has remained united because Jesus provides a shepherd to keep watch over the faithful—266 shepherds to date.
Shepherds speak
Expressing concern on the onslaught of materialism, Pope Pius X in 1903 issued an encyclical on modernism, De Modernist Arum (Worldliness of People).
“Things are going badly on the life of Christians,” he said. He even imposed an “antimodernistic oath” for the clergy.
As he predicted, the New Age dawned, which Nicolas Boilenau, a French poet and critique of the latter part of 16th century, attested, saying: “Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit and its own ways.”
Many people feel they can no longer entrust their life to a shepherd. Shepherds voted into power seemingly failed to be exemplars of goodness. Even some shepherds of the church fail to inspire their flock to walk on the right paths.
Pope Francis, in his first Chrism Mass on March 28, 2013, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, enjoined priests to be “shepherds living with the odor of sheep.”
And to the faithful flock, he said: “Dear laypeople, be close with affection and prayer that they may always be shepherds according to God’s heart.”
On his homily on the Chrism Mass on March 29, 2018, at the Vatican, the pope expounded on “apostolic closeness,” the great choice of the “Lord, who always comes—erchomenos [in person always].”
He explained that closeness is a virtue to be “attentive to ourselves and to others,” which is crucial in evangelization.
He enjoined the religious to “walk among people with the closeness and tenderness of a good shepherd in shepherding them.”
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Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.