July 21 2024. Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
GOSPEL Mark 6:30-34
From a homily on Vatican Radio
GOSPEL Mark 6:30-34
The apostles rejoined Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. Then he said to them, ‘You must come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while’; for there were so many coming and going that the apostles had no time even to eat. So they went off in a boat to a lonely place where they could be by themselves. But people saw them going, and many could guess where; and from every town they all hurried to the place on foot and reached it before them. So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ
SUMMARY OF DON FABIO ROSINI'S HOMILY
The delusion of our century is the belief that we can be completely free and autonomous. The truth, however, is that we are creatures who need to be guided by the Lord into life. Without the Lord, our supposed freedom is really a slavery to our own egos. All of us need the Lord to shepherd us into the paths of life. By ourselves. we follow disordered paths that lead nowhere. Each of us needs to be shepherded by the Lord, but each of us is also called to be shepherds for others. There is no-one, not even a person who is sick in bed, that is not called to live for others. By uniting our sufferings or illness with the Lord, who is the source of life and mercy, we can bring life to others. How mediocre and ugly life is when it is lived for myself, following my own disordered impulses, but how beautiful it is when it is lived in obedience to the promptings of the Good Shepherd, who calls us to live lives of reciprocal mercy.
God, in the person of Jesus, comes among us to be our shepherd
On this sixteenth Sunday of ordinary time, we are presented with the very important scriptural image of the relationship between the flock and the shepherd. In the first reading we hear the condemnation of the Lord towards those so-called “shepherds” who disperse their flocks. The Lord condemns these shepherds and proclaims that he himself will one day gather his people to himself. The Lord himself, concretely in the person of Jesus, will take direct care of his flock. In the Gospel we see how Christ, when he comes, looks with compassion on these crowds who have no other point of reference.
We delude ourselves into thinking that we can set the direction of our lives, but we do not have life within us. We need the Lord to lead us to authentic life
It is a curious and interesting fact that sheep need a shepherd to take care of them. They require someone to take them out to pasture and to lead them to water. They are meek animals and the shepherd has to use a series of sounds and whistles to guide them to where they need to go. We too are sheep who are in need of a shepherd. It is not true that we are totally autonomous. Autonomy is a good and beautiful thing, but only when it is in the context of a proper relationship of communion with the Lord. We are called to allow ourselves to be guided by him. The anthropological delusion of the past century has been the self-referential notion of the autonomous self. Freedom is understood in an absolutist and indefinable way. It is simply not true that we can live without limits. We have a fundamental need to be guided by a shepherd. We sometimes think that we are exercising complete liberty, but in reality we are always under the guidance of someone or something. The liberty we imagine ourselves to have is really a slavery to our own egos, to an emptiness that becomes a disordered impulse to do things that have no direction.
We are creatures and do not have life within ourselves. We need the Lord to shepherd us into life
I do not have an in-built sense of direction for my life. I cannot deduce or invent of my own initiative the path I should take in life. My task, instead is to receive the indications for the direction of my existence. I must allow myself to be shepherded; I must learn how to obey the Lord and obey reality. If I allow myself to be led by the Lord, then how beautiful life becomes! Consider the contrast between this attitude and the approach of someone who tries to impose his own ideological expectations on life; who seeks to coerce life along the path that he considers desirable. Life for this person becomes a torture because it never obeys his expectations. All of us are creatures. We do not have life in and of ourselves. And for this reason all of us need to be shepherded by the Lord. He must show us the paths that lead to life.
The Lord is the source of mercy and he calls us to be shepherds of this mercy for others
This leads to another discourse. All of us are called, according to the graces that the Lord gives us, to be shepherds in our turn. The first murderer of history, Cain, when he was asked where Abel was, responds, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” This is how those who neglect the lives of others always speak. The word “keeper” in Hebrew also means “shepherd”. Am I the shepherd of my brother? Yes, I certainly am! All of us have a responsibility for each other’s lives. If a friend is behaving in a way that damages him, and I do not speak to him, then what kind of friend am I? There is always someone whose life I must help to take care of. Even a person who is himself ill in his sickbed is nevertheless a shepherd because he can offer his suffering for another person. By living his sickness in communion with the Lord he can become a fount of life for others. So each one of us is a shepherd, and, at the same time, each one of us has need to be led by others. How can we live if we do not take care of each other? The fount of this attitude can be found in Sunday’s Gospel. “So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd
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