Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB - celebrant
Ezekiel 34:11-16
Romans 5:5-11
Luke 15:3-7
We are invited this year to grasp the image of the heart through the image of the shepherd. Instead of the heart of Jesus being up front, so to speak, we have the sacred shoulders of the shepherd.
Jesus gives us the beautiful picture of a shepherd looking for a lost and missing sheep. The shepherd finds it and then takes it up on his shoulders. It is all so simple and so natural. It was so striking that one of the first representations of Jesus himself in art was that of a shepherd carrying the sheep on his shoulders. What Jesus is trying to do is to get us to look at the connection between God and the lost. To do this he pulls at the human experience of pasturing. On the one hand, we might take it for granted that a shepherd would go off to find one out of 100. But really now, from the point of view of the market and trading, would the investment in one that had gotten lost really pay off. It might be just as well to loose the one and have the 99 than take time and effort on one. What is one among a 100? But Jesus asks us to reconsider. The theme seems to be that God will not be satisfied unless there is a whole. The community of 100 matters and if one is missing then the group is somehow broken. The community is supposed to be made up of the 100 not 99. So the concern of God is shown to be concern for the whole. The attitude that one sheep got lost and that is too bad does not seem to fit the way God deals with the community. God’s concern is for the lost. Not only is God concerned for the lost, his joy is reflected in having a celebration for the one who was found and is now part of the whole community again. God is happy over the lost being found not the lost being forgotten.
All this is to stress how the heart of God works. All this is to make a point that God’s approach to the brokenness, the lostness of the human situation may be far different from our own. The small picture of the shepherd lifting the lost on to his own shoulders and carrying it back is a picture of tenderness and care. It is certainly not the picture of someone scolding and upbraiding someone because they got lost, went astray, broke rank, and ran away from the group. It is a picture of concern; it is a picture of a shepherd who wants his flock together; he wants everyone who has been entrusted to him to be living in unity. The ultimate purpose of God is not excommunication for doing something wrong, but rather an ingathering a welcoming back, in fact a rejoicing when a stray is picked up and made one of the group again. The heart of God is shown to us by Jesus as he stretches out to include what might naturally be allowed to disappear.
The prophet Ezekiel fills out this picture of the shepherd for us. There we have to imagine our selves as in a hospital room after surgery or serious illness. Here the shepherd is the doctor or the nurse who comes in to check on the wounds, to change the bandages and put on the ointment. Here the shepherd is the physician who is involved in healing. I myself will do this God tells the prophet. God is the nurse, the health care worker. The image of the heart is placed next to the image of the nurse, the doctor. Again, the focus is on life, on healing, on being restored to the community. God protests that he will not let his sore sheep wander in the mists of the hills. He wants them back whole and hearty. Again the focus is on gathering in the scattered, on making the community. The heart of God is stretched to be all embracing. The heart of God has a thought for what is in the darkness what is in the mist. We might run from the shadows, from the rains and the darkness, but God chooses to look there. What is in there must be part of his family, his gathering, his church.
This shepherding of God is made visible in Jesus Christ. That is what our feast proclaims today. The heart of God which is all embracing, the heart of God which is about concern for the weak, the heart of God which is about holding the wounded and the healthy in the same community; the heart of God which is about keeping the virtuous and the lost in touch with each other—that heart is made visible in Christ. And its visibility is offered to us in the concertinas of the actions of a good shepherd. Christ is that Good Shepherd. And when his heart is broken open upon the cross to reveal its depths, what do we find but a source of healing and new life flowing from his side. And what do we hear about that self-offering on the cross? When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself! The heart of Jesus poured out upon the cross is the place of the gathering of all, the strong and the weak, the lost and the found. It is on the cross that the Good Shepherd lays down his life and gives witness to the love of the Father. It is on the cross that the shepherd ultimately carries on his shoulders the lost, the woundedness, the burden of the world and its peoples. The picture of the shepherd with sheep on his shoulders is completed by the shepherd on the cross. There on the cross the heart of Christ became the center of the world, reconciled and at peace. There on the cross God proves his love for us. Shepherd, heart, cross, Christ–this is mystery that is before us today.