Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 21, 2024

by Deacon Steven D. Greydanus  |  07/21/2024  |  Weekly Reflection

Have you ever felt like a sheep without a shepherd?

Have you ever felt lost or alone in your faith? Abandoned, even? Do you know the feeling of going to Mass, perhaps at an unfamiliar parish — or perhaps not — and bracing yourself for what you might experience? Ever had a particularly bad experience with a priest, or looked at problems in the Church, or our nation, or the world, and wondered, “Why don’t the bishops do or say something?”

Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. These feelings are familiar to many of us — perhaps most. Some of us might feel tempted to look back wistfully at some point in the past when we imagine the Church was on stronger footing and think, “This would never have happened back then!” And maybe so, or maybe not. In any case, plenty of other bad things did happen back then. Our experience of lostness and abandonment is nothing new.

It’s there in the first reading from Jeremiah, where we find shepherds actively misleading and scattering the Lord’s flock. In context, this refers particularly to certain late kings of Judah condemned by name in the previous chapter. These kings were sons of David, expected to be leaders spiritually as well as politically and militarily. They are called to be “shepherds that feed my sheep” (Jeremiah 23:2 Douay-Rheims). Instead, Jeremiah says these kings are set on “nothing except their own gain, shedding innocent blood and practicing oppression and extortion” (cf. Jeremiah 22:17).

Today’s Gospel says that Jesus was “moved with pity” by the crowd, “for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” There’s nothing here about bad shepherds— but Jesus has plenty to say about them elsewhere! Just by calling himself “the Good Shepherd,” our Lord implies that there are bad ones: “hirelings” or “hired men” he calls them (cf. John 10:11–14). And from all Jesus has to say about the religious leaders of the day — scribes, Pharisees, and so forth — it’s clear who he’s talking about.

What about in the Church age? I would love to tell you that when God says through Jeremiah, “I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble, and none shall be missing,” he was talking about the Church’s pastors, especially the bishops. And, indeed, heroic and saintly bishops and priests from apostolic times to the present have been appointed by God to shepherd his people amid many difficulties. But it’s fair to say that, as far as we can tell, they have never been the norm. Some of you may know a much-quoted line ascribed to St. John Chrysostom: “The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.” The saint didn’t really say that, but here’s what he did write, in his third homily on the Acts of the Apostles: “I do not think there are many among bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish.”

Much more recently, the Servant of God Dorothy Day wrote in a letter:

I never expected much from the bishops. In all history, popes and bishops and father abbots seem to have been blind and power-loving and greedy. I never expected leadership from them. It is the saints that keep appearing all through history who keep things going.

The saints are not necessarily shepherds . . . but, in and through their love of God and neighbor, we do see the work of the Good Shepherd, caring for his flock. This is ultimately where the reading from Jeremiah points:

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David; as king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land.

There are good priests and good bishops in the Church, and praise God if you have one or the other or both. But we are here for Jesus Christ — and, more importantly, Jesus is here for us, until the end of the age. Next Sunday Jesus will feed this shepherdless flock with the five loaves and two fishes, foreshadowing the Eucharistic feast that unites us today with all the faithful in every age and with the Blessed in heaven in the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dorothy Day said that too, in the same letter: “What I do expect is the bread of life. And down through the ages, there is that continuity.” That’s why we’re here. That’s why, even walking in dark valleys, we are never alone.