The Lord is My Shepherd (Sunday, Week 28, Year A)

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The responsorial psalm of today’s celebration is Psalm 23. It is one of those very popular psalms or passages in the Bible. Many, if not all, of us know and can easily say or sing the psalm. For some persons, it is part of their daily dose of prayers – usually said in the morning before stepping out for the business of the day. Whenever we hear “The Lord is my Shepherd,” we respond with excitement, “…there is nothing I shall want”. And the part that we say more frequently and convincingly is the last verse: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. And we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever and forever!” 

Let us quickly note that for “goodness and mercy to follow us”, we must accept the Lord as our shepherd. And accepting the Lord as our shepherd is not and should not just be a verbal hypocritical profession of faith. It must be seen in real followership. In the pastoral practice of the Middle East, a sheep can’t and shouldn’t expect fresh and green fresh and green pastures if it does not follow the shepherd. Who is a shepherd? What does it mean to follow the shepherd? Within the context of our faith, who is our shepherd?

When we talk about shepherd, let us not be deceived by those beautiful and spotless pictures of Jesus the Good Shepherd: the picture of a well donned man with a spotless, fresh looking face does not bring out the true face of a hardworking shepherd from the Middle East. A real shepherd does not stay in tourist gardens, feeding his sheep. A real shepherd does not feed his sheep in an air-conditioned space. He does not feed his sheep in a palace. He does not feed his sheep at the fringes of the vegetation. It is even said that green, lush and fresh pastures are mostly found far away in the thickets, in a dense strip of vegetation. So, for the shepherd to locate these pastures, he must journey into the wild. In the course of such journey, both the shepherd and the sheep will be at risk of being devoured by wild beasts. They will have to push back thorns and thistles in order to move ahead in search of greener pastures. They may have to climb steep hills in order to locate greener pastures. Real shepherding is never a pleasure trip. The sheep must follow the shepherd as he goes through the brambles, thorns and thistles. The sheep must follow the shepherd as he climbs the steep mountains. The sheep must listen to his voice. If the sheep do not follow and listen to the shepherd, fresh and green pastures (goodness and mercy) shall not be available to the sheep.

Christ is our shepherd, leading us to that mountaintop where there will be a feast of fat things and choice wines as prophesied by Isaiah (cf. Isa. 25:6-10a). It is a mountain journey. By His words and teachings, the invitation has been given to us. Are we ready to follow Him? On that mountain, the Bible says that death, sorrow, tears, pains will be no more. It will be all joy. But are we ready to go through the pains and inconvenience of listening to the shepherd and following him up the mountain? The nature of the response to this invitation to the mountain feast is not the type of quick and joyous response we give to the invitations for our usual day-to-day feasts and banquets. The response to the invitation to this particular mountain feast will be a radical, tough and painful response. That is why those invited, as we have it in the gospel reading (cf. Matt. 22:1-14), made light of it and went off. Some even beat up the servants (the messengers) who brought the invitation; some treated the servants shamefully and killed them. Who does that! Who repays such kindness with contempt and wickedness! Under normal circumstances, no one does that. But all this happened because the invitation card might have spelt out very tough and radical demands. 

Let us respond to this call (or invitation) to the mountaintop! Yes, the conditions are tough; the journey will be painful but the end is all joy. Let us begin now to look for the appropriate “banquet garments”. The appropriate banquet garments must be embroidered with love, righteousness, fairness, justice, sacrifice, faith and trust. Don't forget: we can’t enter the wedding banquet without the wedding garment. 


 

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