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A few minutes by foot from where I presently write in Rome is the Basilica of St. Peter on the Vatican Hill. This was the traditional Roman Station for this Sunday in ancient times. The present church replaced the original built by the Emperor Constatine in the 4th century. It soars with its vast vaults and dome over the originally humble grave of the first Vicar of Christ, the Pastor Ovium, the Shepherd of the Flock. Around the vaulting of the modern Basilica is the dialogue in John 21:15-19 between the Lord and Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, “Peter, do you love me? … Feed my lambs… feed my lambs… feed my sheep.” The threefold interrogation and responses reconciled Peter after his threefold denial of Christ and predicted the manner of the Apostle’s demise. Then was he ready to begin being Christ’s Vicar. “Follow me”, Christ finally told Peter, echoing the parable “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). It will involve laying down your life.
This 2nd Sunday after Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday for its references to the flock and shepherd in the readings. It is appropriate that the Station be that of the first and foremost Pastor Ovium, that Mass should be in the very presence of his bones, so close to where he “followed” the Lord to his own cross in the neighboring Circus of Caligula.
The first reading from 1 Peter 2 describes Christ’s mute, lamb-like acquiescence to His brutal death “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (v. 24).
24 … By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.
Peter quoted Isaiah 53, the description of the Suffering Servant which foreshadowed Christ in His Passion. The reading, however, began by exhorting us to “follow in His steps” (v. 21), which means not only not sinning, for Christ was sinless, but also entails suffering: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you”.
“To this you have been called.” The disciple follows the master wherever he goes as the sheep follow the shepherd. Peter used not only the image of a shepherd (poimaino) of our soul who guides us into the path of suffering, but also that of, as it says in the RSV, the “Guardian” of our soul. Here the RSV stumbles and loses something in translation. That’s always a danger with translation: we have to pick some word in our language for a meaning of a word in another and sometimes there are more than one good choice. The Greek word behind “guardian” of our soul is epískopos, which is an “overseer”. This is where we get the word “bishop”. In fact, in older English translations the phrase reads “shepherd and bishop of our souls”.
In the Gospel passage for Mass, John 10-11-16, Jesus is addressing, among others, Pharisees. They knew their Scriptures. The image of the shepherd in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, comes up in Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; 2 he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul.” Moreover, there is the passage in Ezekiel 34 about Israel’s false shepherds who scatter rather than gather, who, literally fleece the flock. Those sheep are in mortal peril, but God will save them. Giving them His servant David, He will bring them to a new pasture. The Prophet concludes:
“30 And they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord God. 31 And you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.”
The one to come who is a good shepherd, will not be just the Messiah, he will also be God.
And now the Gospel.
At that time Jesus said to the Pharisees: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, 15 as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.
This passage breaks down fairly easily into three basic ideas. Firstly, probably echoing Ezekiel while aiming at the Pharisees, there is the identity of the shepherd. Christ is the shepherd who is good. All others are lacking. They do not have a personal connection with the flock. The flock knows the shepherd who is good and he knows the flock. That “know” is about more than mere data, names and jobs and so forth. It is an intimate connection. The Son and the Father have the intimate bond of knowing which is love and self-gift. So too, the Shepherd and the flock have this intimate bond. Furthermore, the Father sent the Son for the sake of the flock, which will ultimately involve the Son laying down His life for His sheep. Therefore, being sheep and Shepherd together has the mystery of the Cross as its connective core and pivot point.
The scattered sheep in Ezekiel 34 were in mortal peril. They “became food for all the wild beasts” (v. 5). What Christ says about “laying down His life for His Sheep” also means that the sheep are in mortal peril. Why else would He lay down His life? Because the sheep were somewhat inconvenienced? No.
In the Collect for Mass in the Vetus Ordo the point of peril is driven home like spikes in Christ’s arms and feet.
Deus, qui in Filii tui humilitate
iacentem mundum erexisti:
fidelibus tuis perpetuam concede laetitiam;
ut, quos perpetuae mortis eripuisti casibus,
gaudiis facias perfrui sempiternis.
With a slight variations this prayer was in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary on the Sunday after the Octave of Easter, which is today’s Sunday. In the Novus Ordo it mostly survived the censoring editors who snipped and pasted together the new rite together, putting it on the14th Sunday of Ordinary Time. They made two significant changes.
REALLY LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who by the abasement of Your Son
raised up a fallen world:
grant to Your faithful perpetual bliss
so that those whom You snatched from the calamities of perpetual death,
You may cause to enjoy perpetual joys.
First, the Novus Ordo version changed “quos perpetuae mortis eripuisti casibus” to “quos eripuisti a servitute peccati… those whom You snatched from the servitude of sin”. Sure, sin leads to Hell when we don’t do anything about it, but the dimension of peril, is diminished. Also, they changed “perpetuam concede laetitiam” to “sanctam concede laetitiam … grant holy joy”. There’s nothing wrong with holy joy, but see how they stripped out the permanence, the perpetuity? The powerful emphasis on the finality of our final state is eroded and therefore peril of the state of sin is diminished.
Rhetorically, the per- per- per- in the Vetus version rings well. Also, the separation of words which grammatically go together, a trope called hyperbaton, gives additional stress to what they convey. Moreover, there are three mentions of “perpetuity”, the two which are obvious as well as that sempiternis, which again by hyperbaton is separated from gaudiis to give it more emphasis. That gaudiis sempiternis at the end of the colon is an antithesis to perpetuae mortis casibus. Together they form a chiasmus, like the Greek letter x-shaped chi, a common figure of speech, used for emphasis, in ancient Greek and Latin. A chiasm is an A-B-B-A structure which, when placed like this reveals the form:
A-B
X
B-A
We are sharply prodded in this oration to appreciate all the more the possibility of eternal joy because it is super-charged by the harrowing peril of eternal death.
Christ knows His sheep. He knew and knows that we are going to fall and be in mortal peril. But He claims us and finds when we stray. His voice calls to us interiorly to stay close, closely follow.
Without Christ, “shepherd and bishop of our souls”, we were and we are in mortal peril. That’s mortal, as in deadly, as in going to die not just physical death, but eternal death in the smothering agony of Hell, terminal separation from God with zero hope … forever. Mortal sin? Go to confession.
Finally, we might consider the practical ramifications for us in the last verses of the Gospel, in which the Lord says there are others who are not of this flock. There are many who are not of the Church, not near, not following, indeed in mortal peril. Do we stand by idly in enclosed contentment? There are those who have fallen away from the Church, which is even more alarming. I am minded of Lumen gentium 14:
Quare illi homines salvari non possent, qui Ecclesiam Catholicam a Deo per Iesum Christum ut necessariam esse conditam non ignorantes, tamen vel in eam intrare, vel in eadem perseverare noluerint. … For this reason, those who, not being ignorant that the Catholic Church was founded by God through Jesus Christ as necessary, do not wish to enter it or to persevere in it, cannot be saved.
Perhaps you know someone who, by your good example, your cheerful demeanor, your good knowledge of doctrine and history might be raised back up from a fallen world once again into the happiness of being a devout and practicing Catholic.
