Sent Out By The Good Shepherd As Sheep Among Wolves, 14th Friday, July 10, 2015

Fr. Roger Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
July 10, 2015
Gen 46:1-7.28-30, Ps 37, Mt 10:16-23

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• At the end of a few days focusing on Jesus’ preparation of the Apostles to be sent out on their training run to prepare them for their post-Pentecost continuation of his salvific mission, Jesus says something truly shocking and absolutely astonishing. The Good Shepherd, the one who would lay down his life to protect and save his sheep, says that he’s about to send the apostles out “as sheep in the midst of wolves.” That would be like sending a bunch of unarmed Christians out into a gang of armed ISIS members, a bunch of teenage girls unprotected into a male prison, a bunch of children into a convention of child abusers. He told them that they be handed over to courts, scourged in houses of worship, led before governors and kings, betrayed by siblings, parents and children, persecuted in one town to the next and hated by all because of him. Why would he possibly send out his sheep into a coven of wolves? Why would he send his loved ones out to be slaughtered? How is this consistent with his loving us?
• Jesus loves us so much that not only does he want to save us but he wants us to be his assistants in saving others and the way both will occur is when we become truly united to him. At the beginning of Mass today, on which we celebrate a Votive Mass for the Sacred Heart of Jesus — since last Friday, the first of the month, we celebrated the Feast of St. Thomas — we prayed, “Clothe us, Lord our God, with the virtues of the Heart of your Son and set us aflame with his love so that, conformed to his image, we may merit a share in eternal redemption.” It’s through being sent out to the wolves that God the Father will be able to clothe us with the virtues of Jesus’ heart, inflame us with the love with which that heart burns, conform us more fully to Jesus’ image and give us a share in his redemption, both his redemption of us and his redemption of others. Basically everything Jesus described that the wolves would do to his sheep and lambs as he sent them out, he himself endured: he was handed over to the Sanhedrin, brought before governors and kings, scourged in civic and religious contexts, betrayed by those he had made his brothers and sisters, his spiritual sons and daughters, hated by so many because he didn’t fit into their categories, and ultimately brutally massacred. But the Lamb led to the slaughter rose from the dead on the third day. And he beckons us to follow him, to love like him, to redeem with him. It’s through this contest with the wolves that Jesus will accomplish the hard work of conformity with him that few of us would ever choose voluntarily. No matter how many times Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow him along the narrow road that leads to life, few of us will take him literally and follow up along that bloody path: that’s why he allows the wolves to help us.
• Jesus is clear that as we’re being persecuted in the way he describes we will be able to accomplish the mission he has sent us out to accomplish, the mission of proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has arrived, to heal, to raise from the dead, to exorcise through our incarnating the Gospel. He says we will suffer so that we can be a “witness before them and the pagans,” as the “Spirit of your Father [is] speaking through you.” Jesus doesn’t say merely that “God” or the “Holy Spirit” will speak through us, but the “Spirit of your Father,” because this experience of suffering will convince us more than anything of our Divine Filiation, that the Father cares for us more than he cares for the sparrows and the lilies, that every strand of hair is numbered. At the end of the passage, as he encourages us to persevere in union with him, he reminds us that we will now even traverse Israel before his kingdom comes, before some, moved by our witness, accept the testimony and follow us to meet the Son of Man.
• This is a powerful message, one that many of us are tempted to duck rather than believe and embrace. We have a prejudice that if we love God, if we’re moral, if we do everything that God asks, that we will be blessed in this world with friends, with good health, with professional and personal honor, with universal praise for our virtue. Jesus promises us we’ll be blessed, but blessed in another way, blessed with the Cross, blessed with the presence of the Spirit of our Father, blessed with salvation and the opportunity to help save others. He clear articulates the cost of discipleship but says that the price tag is worth it. He sends us out before wolves as lambs and tells us not to be afraid because God the Holy Spirit will be with us.
• As he sends us out he gives us the instruction to be as wise as serpents and as pure as doves. He doesn’t send us out as naive sheep. If we’re united with him, we won’t be naive. He wants the children of the light to be savvier, more prudent, than the children of this world (Lk 16:1-12). He wants us to recognize that there are wolves out there — those that we can see and the spirits of those we cannot see — who will oppose us for no other reason than we represent Him and he doesn’t want us naively to walk into their trap. Jesus himself repeatedly avoided those who were trying to entrap because his hour hadn’t yet come. But as we are savvy in this way he wants us at the same time to be as pure, as simple, as single-minded as doves, focused on God and how he is with us in every moment seeking to save us. He wants us to be docile and united to the One who came down upon him in the Jordan under the form of a dove. That is the way we will be able to give him the type of witness he deserves and the type of testimony that will genuinely help others to seek to conform themselves to the same Good Shepherd.
• Today the Good Shepherd comes to us here in this Chapel not as a Lamb among wolves but as a Savior among those who have received his gift. Rather than being betrayed by family members, he’s here to be embraced, as he hands himself — betrays himself — over to us to strengthen us precisely as he sends us out. It’s here the Holy Spirit hovers over us, reminds us of our filiation in Jesus’ divine filiation and makes us siblings who won’t betray each other or him, but those who will support him and each other, persevering until the end. It’s here that the Father seeks to fill us with the virtues of the Heart of His Son, inflame us with His Love, conform us to his image and give us the fullness of redemption. Let us receive these great gifts today and be fortified to go out fearlessly among wolves with the power of God and seek to draw into this mystery as many sheep as we can and by God’s miraculous power to transform as many wolves as possible, through serpentine wisdom and dovelike purity, into sheep for God’s eternal fold.

The readings for today’s Mass were: