Inner Light

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year. Fr Simon Gaine considers how Christ is our shepherd and teacher.

The shepherd, caring for his flock and leading them into pasture, is one of the most important and powerful images for a king or leader that we find in the Bible. A king was meant to care for the people, like a shepherd cares for his flock, and in our first reading we saw God’s harsh words against leaders who failed to be good shepherds for their human flocks. These guilty shepherds will be judged for their actions and their neglect of God’s people.

In today’s Gospel we see that Jesus recognized how the people suffered for lack of a true shepherd, because the need for a shepherd is so central to human flourishing. Jesus saw how many people followed after him precisely because they were seeking a shepherd in their lives, looking for someone to guide them.

But now look at how Jesus responds to the people: he teaches them. He teaches them the way to God. As St Paul tells us in our second reading: through Christ, we all have in the one Spirit our way to come to the Father. And part of how we come through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, to the God the Father is through receiving his teaching.

I don’t suppose we think of our political leaders as our teachers. They are there to govern and make difficult decisions for our society, and there has been a great deal of disappointment with them in recent times, especially with their actions and where they have been neglectful. However, I don’t think we think they are there to teach us what is good. And I think that has to be right, insofar as teaching and governing are different things.

And yet in Jesus, these two, teaching and shepherding, come together. We cannot act in the right way in life, we cannot love in the right way, unless we know what is right, and that is something we need in part to learn. If we are all in constant disagreement about what is truly good for us, about what makes our humanity truly flourish, then we cannot be a single flock, united under one shepherd.

Jesus shows us by his teaching that it is ultimately God who is our good, the Supreme Good, the Supreme Good we need to get to know, if we are to live and love successfully: God is the goal of our lives and should be the goal of everything we do, of everything that makes us the kind of people we are.

And this is why Jesus begins to shepherd and lead us, by teaching us the truth about God and the truth about ourselves. Jesus was a good teacher because as God’s Son he knows God perfectly. This is why he wanted time away from the people in order just to spend time with his heavenly Father and to draw his apostles into his own relationship with the Father. And if we are to be Christ’s flock, shepherded by Jesus into the love of God, then we need to spend time with God by spending time with Jesus in prayer and getting to know his teaching and the teaching of his Church.

It is in the life of the Church that we can experience the power of Christ’s shepherding and teaching us. Any normal teacher can only teach us from the outside, and in the Pope and Bishops Jesus has given us shepherds who can teach us, though somehow only from outside ourselves. Christ himself, however, is present deeply within us, because he is God as well as human, because he dwells in our minds and hearts as one we know and love, and because we are united to him ever more deeply by being fed with his Body at Mass, he the Head of the Body and we his members.

Jesus can uniquely give us light from the inside, as well as teach us from the outside, and that is why he is the most powerful teacher we can have, if we will allow him to teach us and lead us through life. If we can come to know God better through Christ now and through his flock, the Church, we can learn how to live better and love one another better, and so make our way through the journey of this life to the destination of knowing and loving God for ever in heaven.

Readings: Jeremiah 23:1-6 | Ephesians 2:13-18 | Mark 6:30-34