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| U.S. Navy SEAL Trident Badge |
Homily #29b (12pm)
Homily #29a (8am)
Thank You Remarks Before Homily #29c (2pm Cancer Support Ministry Mass)
I had intended to record the homily that followed which was a shortened version of the homily I delivered @ 8am and 12pm, but I ran out of space on the recording device.
[NOTE: I baptized 2 children today for a total of 32 baptized as of today. The 2 children I baptized were children of my former students who I taught 17 years ago.]
HOMILY
#29a-c: Good Shepherd Sunday
“Defending
the Flock of Christ”
4th Sunday of Easter
April
26, 2015
According to SEAL sniper Chief Petty Officer Chris
Kyle, there are three types of people in the world: There are sheep. There are wolves that prey on the sheep and
eat them. And then, there are the
sheepdogs.
The sheepdog. The
sheepdog defends the sheep from the wolves.
He is neither the shepherd nor the sheep, yet a member of the flock. The sheepdog knows and listens to the voice
of the shepherd. He is loyal, faithful,
obedient, ever-vigilant, trained well by the shepherd to engage the wolf, and
will lay down his life for love of the poor flock of the shepherd.
From this story, there are three points for Good
Shepherd Sunday today:
First, let us be like faithful sheepdog and defend the
flock of Christ the Good Shepherd and, in a sense, share in the office of
shepherding His people.
Second, Christ the Good Shepherd protects his flock
through the Sacrament of Holy Orders.
Third, Christ the Good Shepherd feeds his flock
through sound teaching and the Eucharist.
The
first point: Christ the Good Shepherd entrusts us with responsibility in the
Church, and in some sense when we are entrusted with the care of souls, let us
be like loyal sheepdog at the service of the Good Shepherd Our Lord
Jesus Christ (and let us not be like the hired man who
runs at the first sight of danger or the spiritual wolves, as we see in today’s
Gospel).
The hired man represents those who have neglected the
care of souls entrusted to them. He or
she “sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away” so that the wolf
catches the sheep. But what is important
here is that we are not just talking about physical
danger so much but we are more importantly talking about spiritual danger where the souls entrusted to our care are given
poor examples or false teachings.
St. John Bosco’s motto was, “Souls, souls, give me
souls, and take away the rest.” The
salvation of souls is the supreme purpose of why the Church exists. The goal of our life is to go to heaven and
take as many others with us as possible.
And those of us entrusted with some function or role
in the Church especially have a greater responsibility to help those placed in
our care to go to heaven, whether one is a lay leader in the parish, a parent of
smaller or older children, a widow that comes to Mass, a teacher or catechist. And so I ask all of us: With what – or rather with whom – has Christ the Good Shepherd
entrusted you? With whom has Christ the
Good Shepherd entrusted you?
He himself alone is the Good Shepherd. In the First Reading, it is written in the
Word of God from the Acts of the Apostles, “There is NO salvation through
anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race
by which we are to be saved”. In other
words, no other world religion founder saves as Jesus saves. No one else!
He is the only Savior of the world.
We participate and are co-workers with the Redeemer. The shepherd, not the sheepdog, is ultimately
in charge.
At the Rite of Baptism, we ask parents and godparents,
“It will be your responsibility of raising these children in the practice of
the Christian Faith. Do YOU clearly
understand what you are undertaking?” [St. Padre Pio!]
As an educator, teacher and catechist myself for over 25
years, I take the thought of having to someday stand before God seriously and
account for what I have taught those entrusted to me. Catholic school teachers and catechists (whether
in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, this diocese, or another diocese) have the
grave responsibility to clearly teach what the Catholic Church teaches, not his
or her opinion, but Catholic teaching. I
ask myself frequently: Did I faithfully teach what the Church teaches?
A parent (especially a father) or godparent, even if
the child is now an adult, has the grave responsibility to bring their children
and godchildren up in the practice of the Catholic faith first by their witness
or example and also by their words. If
their children have left the Church, parents and godparents have to do all they
can to bring them home to the Church again.
Again, the question: With whom has
Christ the Good Shepherd entrusted you? God
sent them to you for a reason. Let us be
sheepdog for them and spiritually protect and love them.
The
second point is that Jesus the Good Shepherd willed that his Church that he
founded have a visible structure, a hierarchical constitution, or clergy to
teach, govern and sanctify His flock. He said, “I will not leave you as orphans.”
There are three degrees of offices in the Sacrament of
Holy Orders: Bishop, priest, and deacon, in that order. In the Greek, the words are episkopae,
presbyteroi, and diakonia, respectively.
When St. Matthias replaced Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, the word episkopae
was used to describe St. Matthias’s apostolic office.
The bishop is a successor of the Twelve Apostles. You will notice when a bishop celebrates
Mass, he will sometimes hold a staff which is called a “crosier”. It is like a shepherd’s staff. With the top of the staff, the bishop acting as
a shepherd gently governs Christ’s flock, but with the sharp bottom of the
staff, the bishop symbolically fights off the wolves that threaten us, the
flock of Christ.
A priest is a co-worker with the bishop and shares in
the priestly office of the bishop. On
this Good Shepherd Sunday, we need to pray for priests. (This reality did not hit me until one day a
friend of mine asked me to contact a priest for her in the hospital. We had a difficult time getting a
priest. It also hit me when I was
travelling, and there was no priest to celebrate Mass.) Thus, we as a parish need to have a culture
of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. This parish has produced some priests like
Br. Raj Derivera who will be ordained a transitional deacon in June and, God
willing, will be ordained a priest next year.
The deacon is at the “lower level of the hierarchy”
and is not ordained unto the priesthood but unto the ministry. The deacons remind people not of Christ the
Head but of Christ the Servant. A deacon
baptizes, officiates marriage if delegated, do funerals, preach on occasion, serves
the poor and promotes justice, etc. You
will see a deacon at Mass wear his stole diagonally, while the priests wears
his stole around the neck.
In the Roman ritual, we have a transitional deacon and
a permanent deacon. A transitional
deacon is a seminarian who will eventually be ordained a priest, like Br. Raj
Derivera for instance. But a permanent
deacon does not intend to be ordained a priest, like myself, and can be married
with kids. [announce wife is pregnant
@12pm]
The
third and final point: Jesus the Good Shepherd feeds his flock, you and me,
through sound teaching, especially in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
How does one discern the voice of the Good Shepherd? One way is through the prayerful reading and
study of official Church teachings, instead of from personal opinion or the
media. Get a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which
provides a systematic summary of our Faith.
Put the Catechism near your
Bible. Find solid programs and
institutes that use the Catechism. Interestingly, the Catechism has as its official logo an image of the Good Shepherd.
One hears the voice of the Good Shepherd through sound
teaching, but one is also fed by the Bread of Life. Regular Sunday Mass attendance protects the
flock entrusted to our care. If we do
not receive the Lord’s Body in the state of grace every week, the wolves of worldly
secularism and moral relativism will eat us alive. Without Sunday Mass and the Eucharist, we
will scatter from Christ. We will die
spiritually. It is not enough to say
that I can pray my Bible at home and eat Wonder Bread from my kitchen cabinet,
because that bread has not been consecrated by a priest of Christ. One cannot be good without God.
So, to summarize:
-Let us be like faithful sheepdog defending the flock
of Christ the Good Shepherd.
-The Good Shepherd protects his flock through the
Sacrament of Holy Orders.
-The Good Shepherd feeds his flock through sound
teaching and the Eucharist.
As I close, let us look to the mother of the Good
Shepherd. We may not be Navy SEALs, but
we do have in her the strongest combat general and admiral ever. This is
especially noteworthy because, as we approach the month of May, we can take
this opportunity to devote ourselves to the holy rosary and her Immaculate
Heart.
(Bishop Oliver Doeme of the Diocese of Maiduguri,
Nigeria, recently reported that Jesus appeared to him. Jesus seemed to hand him a sword, but when
the bishop went to get the sword from Jesus it turned into a rosary. Jesus then said to the bishop, “Boko Haram is
gone” three times. The bishop pointed
out that the rosary will end Islamic extremist terrorism and avert war. Pray the rosary daily esp. in May.)
May Mary, the mother of Christ the Good Shepherd, the
stone rejected by the builders which has become the cornerstone, lead us to her
Son so that we will say, “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing else I
shall want.” Amen. Alleluia.
Christ is Risen!
