Christ The Good Shepherd

To follow Christ is to hold together strength and gentleness in a world that resists both. Br René Stockman, former Superior General of the Congregation of the Brothers of Charity, reflects on how in the face of conflict and confusion, the Gospel calls for courage shaped by grace, not force Those who try to follow Jesus Christ radically and put His message into practice have never had it easy in this world. His person and His message met with resistance in His time and led Him to the Cross. It would therefore be surprising if this resistance were to disappear today, for that would mean we had watered down the Gospel message into a pleasant story for our times. Christ brought us the Good News, a message that leads to true life, but that is not always the life the world holds up as an ideal. On the contrary. If we take the Sermon on the Mount, the heart of the message Christ wanted to impart to us, it would take a great deal of manipulation to reconcile it with what the world prioritises. We therefore often hear that, in the business world, one would not get very far with a message like the Sermon on the Mount. But even in our own lives, it is very difficult to remain consistently faithful to the radical message of the Gospel. Are we willing, like Christ, to take up our cross and follow Him all the way to Calvary, or do we give in to the temptation to fabricate our own interpretation of the Gospel, one that offends no one and grants us an easy life? The Gospel message, brought to us by Christ, calls on us, on the one hand, to be forceful in fulfilling it, yet at the same time not to lose our gentleness. These are two seemingly contradictory qualities that we must strive to hold together. If we act only forcefully, we run the risk of turning the Good News into something harsh, a spirituality that amounts to us being strict with ourselves and equally strict with others. It is a spirituality that actually takes us back to the mindset of the Pharisees, who were Our Lord’s chief opponents. But do we not then miss the joy that a life centred on God can bring us? Do we not run the risk of narrowing the message of the Gospel down to a strict rulebook? And do we not place burdens on our own shoulders and those of others that are difficult to bear, burdens that are often regarded as the exclusive result of our own efforts? It then seems as though we want to live for God, but at the same time without God. It is a spirituality that can even make us arrogant, self-satisfied in the thought that we are, after all, good Christians and much better than others. With such an attitude, we leave no room for God’s grace and rely exclusively on our own efforts. Our forceful actions then become strained behaviour that will have little positive impact on others. We view the Gospel message as intended for an elite, and we are glad to belong to this elite. Forcefulness alone will not get us there, and then we are very far from the basic attitude that Paul describes when he says: “When we are weak, then we are strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). In the teaching of St Paul a very different tone is struck, and we are called to adopt a meek attitude. But here too we must be careful about what we understand by this meekness and how we interpret the weakness that Paul describes. Paul was not a figure who radiated weakness. Rather, he was forceful and full of courage. Before his conversion, he did not spare the sword in persecuting Christians. And after his conversion, with similar zeal and strength, he travelled with boundless dedication to proclaim the Good News everywhere. He was not a man of compromise. Yet in his letters we also discern a genuine concern for those with whom he lived and worked. We need only read the letter he wrote to Philemon to see the tenderness with which he speaks of his relationship with him. In his Song of Love (1 Cor. 13) he reveals the warmth that was in his heart: “Set your heart on love” (1 Cor. 14:1) is the command he gives to us all. It was love that drove him and channelled his intense character into the almost incomprehensible zeal that marked him. From Paul, we learn that we do not have to set aside our individuality when we want to follow Christ, but that we must entrust ourselves to His grace. We must truly become instruments in His hands and therefore be willing to surrender ourselves to Him, until we can say with that same Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). It is Christ who must become the reference point in our lives, He alone. Christ did not change the characters and professional skills of His Apostles, but He did give them a new orientation. “From now on I will make you fishers of men” (Mt 4:19). But in this new mission, they will allow themselves to be guided by Christ and will also obey Him when He commands them, against all reason, to cast their nets on the other side (cf. John 21:6). It is Jesus who becomes their shepherd and who carries this out with both strength and gentleness. He sends them out as sheep among wolves, but as the good shepherd, He will never abandon them. That is the heart of the matter: in Jesus Christ we have a good shepherd, to whose guidance we may entrust ourselves. We pray this in the well-known Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures … Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me …” Indeed, if we follow Him, we have nothing to fear, even if our path leads through dark valleys and we face situations that seem hopeless from a purely human perspective. To stay with the image of the shepherd and his sheep, we recall the words of St John Chrysostom, in which he urges us to resist the temptation to become wolves ourselves. “As long as we remain sheep, we will prevail, and even if we are surrounded by countless wolves, we will succeed in overcoming them. But if we become wolves, we will be defeated, because we will lack the shepherd’s help. He does not tend wolves, but sheep” (St John Chrysostom, Homily 33 on the Gospel according to Matthew). Here the question arises of how we behave in the face of resistance and persecution. Do we maintain our strength without losing our gentleness, or do we become hard-hearted and use the same weapons with which others try to attack us? In the latter case, we become like wolves and think that only through violence can we wage the battle in the world. There are no moments in history, including our own, when we are not confronted with unjust conditions and situations that are completely at odds with the great principles of the Gospel. We are regularly confronted with direct attacks against the Faith. We live in a time when people are quick, too quick, to reach for weapons in order supposedly to combat injustice. We see this today on the international stage, where so many flashpoints of war are flaring up and where we have fallen into a spiral of violence. All around us, we see wolves devouring the sheep and taking the place of the shepherd. The image of the wolf also brings to mind a story of St Francis of Assisi in the town of Gubbio, where a wolf struck fear into the population but ultimately brought peace. Francis entered into dialogue with the wolf and reached a mutual agreement: he would ensure that the wolf had enough food every day, on condition that the wolf would henceforth leave the people in peace. Is this not a powerful image of how one should try to address injustice and persecution? Instead of immediately resorting to arms, one must give absolute priority to dialogue and strive to reach a feasible compromise, without abandoning moral principles, in the conviction that there is Someone who blesses and guides this dialogue, like a good shepherd. St Francis was able to face that wolf alone because the peace of the Lord was present in his heart. It is this peace that we wish upon one another during the celebration of the Eucharist, and it is with this peace that we must go out into the world. It is therefore regrettable that the wish for peace has often degenerated into an enthusiastic greeting of one another, without a deep realisation that it is the peace of the Lord that we wish upon one another. It is that peace we need in order to stand in the world as sheep and face the confrontation with the wolves we will encounter. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid” (John 14:27). With the peace of the Lord in our hearts, we will not be troubled or lose heart, but will receive the inner strength to face the wolves, like Francis, in a forceful yet gentle manner. Pope Leo XIV has often repeated lately that peace cannot be achieved through weapons. How relevant here are the words of Chrysostom urging us to resist the temptation to act and behave like wolves. This naturally requires humility and the trust that there is still a shepherd who leads us along the right paths and makes us lie down in green pastures (Psalm 23). What we are witnessing today worldwide should prompt us to look into our own hearts, remove all traces that lead to violence and plant there the seeds of God’s peace. In this way, we can truly remain as sheep among wolves, keeping in mind the words of the Lord Jesus: that He will never forsake us (cf. Mt 10:19).