Today, April 26, the fourth Sunday of Easter, is also Good Shepherd Sunday. The Good Shepherd is one of the earliest symbols of the Christian community that predates the Cross as an image of Christ.
The choice of such a symbol is understandable, as the early Christian community was closer to the experience of the Risen Christ and had eyewitnesses in its midst.
The story of the compassion and love of Christ via the Good Shepherd was told by these eyewitnesses, and it resonated with the hopes and longings of the people to establish a community that became one of the most remarkable organizations in human history—the first global organization with a 2,000-year-plus history.
As the Church itself would say, she is the “holy, sinful church” that is always in need of reform. Thus, amid its scandals and mistakes, the Church was founded on the witnessing by the apostles of their encounter with the Risen Lord in an existential sense, and more deeply, in a spiritual, metaphysical sense.
What is essential is the experience of God’s compassion and love in Christ, which is what connects our earthly existence with our spiritual and future existence in eternity.
A story to tell
The eminent scholar Howard Gardner, father of the Multiple Intelligences theory, wrote as one of his conclusions in his book, “Leading Minds,” that a great leader has a story to tell, and in his/her story, others find their own story. As we often read and heard from the days of our youth, the Gospels, Christ’s story, is the greatest story ever told.
Today is a good time to remember and reflect on the early and central image of this story, the Good Shepherd that represent the story of God’s compassion and love for humanity.
In 1992, St. John Paul II issued an apostolic exhortation entitled “Pastores Dabo Vobis (I Will Give You Shepherds).” It talks about seminary and priestly formation in a contemporary world that was to see even greater changes a few years after the document’s release, when the Internet started gaining attention in the mid-1990s.
The document touches on the leadership role of the shepherds of the Christian community, the pastors and priests who are the sacramental presence of Christ in the Church and in the world. A more vivid image of the shepherd as leader is in John 21: 1-23, when the Risen Lord appears to the disciples and asks Peter the triple question of love.
The narrative is reminiscent of Peter’s call in Luke 5: 1-11; the setting, the sequence of events and the commissioning are parallel features in Luke and John. But there is a “twist” in the commissioning.
In Luke, the Call of the First Disciples, Christ tells Peter, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” (Luke 5:10) Then in John (21: 15-19), the commission becomes, “He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs… Tend my sheep…’”
Handpicked leader
Here you have the heart of the matter—the commissioning of the handpicked leader of the early Church to lead—by loving and caring for his flock as a way of following the first Good Shepherd.
This becomes even more meaningful to us, the Philippine Church and the Filipino nation. For the former, it is because of the recent visit of Pope Francis; but added to the latter—or both—is the coming national elections in which we will choose the leader of the country.
In his speeches, Pope Francis asked us, time and again, to go to the poor who are marginalized. This is a renewal of the Church’s mission and also a timely reminder as we choose our leaders in a year’s time.
A couple of months ago I met with a research team to consult on how we are to design a voters’ education program for the poor members of the youth. We have our basic framework, the narrative of our people and nation in our journey from the time of Jose Rizal and his fellow students in Europe.
I wanted to know how this framework is contextualized in the life of our partner segment in Philippine society.
Humbled
The research team said pretty much the same thing as a recent article on the Internet discussed about the pattern of voting among the poor. We need to immerse in the world of the poor and simply listen—set aside our frameworks, biases, etc., and really lend an ear.
It humbled us when we thought we had a brilliant idea. The best voters’ education program is to listen to the poor and allow them to tell us, the “non-poor,” as the article calls us, of their pain and frustrations and, yes, their hopes and dreams.
Addressing the youth at the University of Santo Tomas, Pope Francis set aside his prepared text and spoke from the heart: “In the Gospel, we just heard (The Rich Young Man), there was a beautiful phrase, for me the most important of all: ‘Jesus looked at the young man and he loved him.’ When you see Rikki and his friends, you love them because they do good things. Jesus says something very important: ‘You lack only one thing.’
“What is it that I lack? To all of you who Jesus loves so much, I ask you: Do you allow others to give you from their riches to you who have not? You know how to give and yet you have never learned how to receive. You still lack one thing. Become a beggar… Learn how to beg… to receive with humility…
“Have I learned how to beg? Or am I self-sufficient? Do I think I need nothing? Do you know you, too, are poor? This is what helps you mature in your commitment to give to others. Learn how to open your hand from your very own poverty.”
This is the leader, the Good Shepherd that our people need and deserve, not those who simply promise a better life and future. Neither do we need those who provide the day-to-day needs of the poor, the dole-out-ers and patrons.