4th Sunday of Easter 2021
Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18
I am not cut out to be a shepherd in the usual sense of the word. If I had ever doubted that, my doubts would have been laid to rest on my first Easter Sunday in the wonderful and historic parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, Claughton-on-Brock, a truly rural parish, home to more sheep (and cows) than you can shake the proverbial stick at.
Directly opposite the church is a field, and after Mass on Easter Sunday I noticed that a lamb had emerged from that same field through a gap in the fence and was now wandering disconsolately along the grass verge, to the evident distress of its mother.
Enlisting the help of a parishioner, I decided to apply science to the problem. The parishioner and I took up positions several yards apart, with the lamb, and the gap in the fence, between us. The plan was to advance slowly on the lamb from both directions, and so to shepherd it (there’s the word) towards and through the gap, to rejoin the plaintively bleating ewe.
We had reckoned without the ingenuity, perversity, and dexterity of lambs. Sensing a plot, the creature set off at a rate of knots, darted between my legs, and hurtled along the grass verge, before making its way through another gap, and trotting serenely back to its mother. Did it wink at us? I can’t be sure.
So who said that sheep are stupid? Not I, not after that episode, nor indeed after watching sheep at work among the picnickers on the fells of the Lake District or Peak District. More than once, I have seen sheep trample over relaxing fell walkers, as they make a bee line for the backpacks and rucksacks where they know that food will be concealed. In go their heads, and out come the sandwiches, to be held against all comers, and munched enthusiastically, while all the time the raider keeps a wary eye open for counter attacks. Stupid? No! Docile? Not on your life! Crafty? Yes! Thuggish? Not half!
In speaking of Himself as the Good Shepherd, Our Lord never makes the claim that sheep are stupid. They need protection, they need to be known and loved, but they are not fools. Far from being foolish, they have the wisdom to know the Good Shepherd, to recognise His love for them, and to respond.
“I know my own, and my own know me” says Jesus: it is a two way process. He then goes further: “Just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father”. Ponder those words: they are actually breathtaking. The relationship of knowing love, or of loving knowledge, between the sheep and the Good Shepherd, between us and the Son of God, is as close and intimate as the relationship between that same Son and the Father.
That is a remarkable statement. Do we work at our relationship with Jesus the Good Shepherd to make it a statement of the truth?
This moves us on to another question: what about the relationship between priests and people? (Technically, we should begin with bishops and people, but we will settle for something more manageable.) In these days, where a priest will probably be responsible for three parishes, it may seem impossible for that mutual love and knowledge to exist. Certainly the days are long gone when the parish priest and his curates would set out, census books in hand, to knock on the door of every Catholic, whose personal history was well known and documented.
So what can be done? Being no longer in a parish, I have no intention of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, to pontificate to my brother priests about what they should be doing. All I can envisage is an adaptation of the old principles to a changed situation: openness; availability; visibility; genuine love, concern, and interest, especially for the less attractive—but above all that knowledge of the Good Shepherd which is rooted in deep prayer.
