The Merciful Care of the Good Shepherd, Fourth Saturday in Ordinary Time (I), February 8, 2025

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• We have been pondering the Letter to the Hebrews for the past four weeks. The climax of it happened four days ago on Tuesday when the sacred author told us, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.” The point of the Letter, the point of the Christian life, is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to learn from him, to follow him, to see where his eyes and heart turn. It’s to keep our eyes fixed on him who was tempted in every way we are but never sinned. It’s to keep our eyes fixed on him who is our high priest piercing the veil so that he can lead us all of the way home.
• Today as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we zero in on his heart. The Gospel tells us that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity for the crowds for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus’ viscera exploded with compassion on the crowds. And today as we look at him, we see how he addresses our most fundamental needs as Good Shepherd. Receiving and responding to that help is what will make us good sheep. Imitating Jesus in caring for others as he does will be the way that we can in him become good shepherds. Today in the readings are highlighted five ways he seeks to shepherd us.
• We see, first, that he takes us apart to be with him. “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while,” he says to the apostles after they had returned from a journey. The Good Shepherd knows that we need time of prayer. Jesus wants us to have rest, but a particular type of rest. In the Psalm we pray, “In verdant pastures he gives me repose. Beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul.” Jesus does this in prayer and he’s always, every day, seeking to lead us apart from the crowds for a while to refresh us in this way. He says elsewhere, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.” Prayer is a time to yoke ourselves and all we do to him, because it’s by taking upon his yoke that we will find that rest.
• Second, he teaches us, just like he “began to teach them many things.” We pray in the Psalm, “He guides me in right paths for his name’s sake.” Jesus has come to teach us about God, about ourselves and about how to become like God. That work of teaching never ends. Teaching is a great act of mercy.
• Third, yoking us to himself on the inside, he wants to teach and help us to do the Father’s will as a result of this communion. In today’s first reading from the conclusion of the Letter to the Hebrews, we read that God the Father “who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep” seeks to “furnish [us] with all that is good, that you may do his will.” And he does this by “carry[ing] out in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ.” Jesus wants to help us to do the Father’s will from within, uniting ourselves to him whose whole life was a loving adhesion to the will of his Father. This is why the Letter says to us about prayer, “Through Jesus, let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” The praise we offer is through lips confessing his name, not silently, not merely in prayer, but among others, especially through the work we do, which is, for most of us, at least a third of our existence. Jesus precisely helps us to do this. He also transforms us on the inside to help us love others with the love with which he loves us to overflowing. That’s why the Letter says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have; God is pleased by sacrifices of that kind.” The sacrifice of praise that is not just of our lips but of our charity.
• Fourth, he seeks to lead us, including through suffering and death, as we’ve been pondering the last month throughout the Letter to the Hebrews. The Psalm says, “Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.” Jesus is the Good Shepherd who makes sure we lack for nothing, even when he’s guiding us through dark valleys where we can see very little because of our fear. But these dark valleys are opportunities for us to enlarge our eyes and our ears in faith. As we keep our eyes fixed our him our ears can become more attentive. The Gospel verse says, “My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me.” When we’re in dark valleys we’re much more dependent on the Lord’s voice and guidance and that’s why he allows them. He perfects our faith through them. One of the ways he leads us is through obedience. The Letter to the Hebrews talks about the importance of loving obedience. “Obey your leaders and defer to them, for they keep watch over you and will have to give an account, that they may fulfill their task with joy and not with sorrow, for that would be of no advantage to you.” The more we fill them with joy by our openness and response, the more we’ll be able to receive from God through them.
• Finally, the Good Shepherd feeds us. His concern for the apostles was because they “had no opportunity even to eat” because of the great numbers coming to them. We see in the Gospel his care for the crowds that led to the multiplication of loaves and fish. In the Psalm we see the Good Shepherd’s aim, “You spread the table before me.” The Lord wants to nourish us in body and soul.
• Someone who discovered Jesus as her merciful Good Shepherd, who allowed him to transform her through prayer, the teaching of the truth, doing his will within especially in work, through guidance day to day, and through the nourishment of holy communion, is the great and lovable saint we celebrate today, Saint Josephine Bakhita. She had suffered tremendously as a slave, but eventually she rejoiced in her sufferings because they allowed her to come to discover Jesus Christ, who had suffered so much for her. When Pope Benedict wrote his beautiful encyclical on Christian hope, Spe Salvi, he featured her. She was born in the Darfur region of Sudan about 1869 (there were no records and no one knew for sure). When she was 9, she was kidnapped by Arab Muslim bandits, forced to convert to Islam, and then sold into slavery on five different occasions to six different owners. As was the custom with Sudanese slaveowners at the time, she was repeatedly beaten as a little girl, even when she was prompt in doing what was commanded. On one occasion, one or her masters showed up with flour, salt and razor blades to brand her. With the flour, the owner sketched on her breasts, belly and arms 114 intricate designs and then with the razor blades cut into her skin according to those patterns. While she was bleeding and in enormous pain, the master then poured salt into the wounds so that they would never heal and she would always be branded. To those wounds were added another 30 indelible scars over the course of her enslavement. She was eventually sold to the Italian consul in Khartoum. This was the first time she wasn’t beaten when she was told to do things. When the political situation destabilized, the consul needed to leave the country and he took along with him Bakhita — a name that means “fortunate,” given to her by one of her owners, because she couldn’t remember the name her parents had given her, so great was the trauma of her capture and her beatings. He gave her to the service of friends when he arrived back in Italy, where she helped to raise a baby as a nanny. When the owners were preparing to return to the Sudan after the political situation had improved, they temporarily entrusted Bakhita and the little girl to the care of the Canossian Sisters in town. It was there that Bakhita was really exposed to Christianity for the first time. Her reaction to seeing a bloody Italian crucifix was unforgettable. She recognized that the one whom Christians adored as Lord and Master must be able to understand her pain, since he had been lacerated in his scourging just as severely as she had been repeatedly whipped and then sliced up with razor blades. When the family returned from the Sudan to take Bakhita and their daughter with them to Africa, Bakhita refused. A lawsuit followed that under Italian law in general and under a law freeing Sudanese slaves in particular, the tribunal declared her to be free. Insofar as she was now over 18, she could stay. She was baptized with the name Josephine Margaret and confirmed, made her first Communion from the hands of the future St. Pius X, and was eventually accepted as a Canossian Sister, where she served for the next 44 years as a cook, sacristan and portress. She was always so grateful for the teaching of her new true Parón or “Master” — not a slave master but a Magister, or teacher, a Good Shepherd teaching her the wisdom of how to live, love and die so as to live forever —  and she always sought not only to live according to that wisdom but to pass it on to others. Even though she had never received much education, the school girls used to line up at the door of the school just for her to pat them on the head, because she was able to teach them the wisdom of life, love and trust. The greatest lesson she taught, however, is the treasure we have in the Redeemer and his love. She was asked by one of the students what she would say to her slave masters if she were to encounter them. She replied unhesitatingly, “If I were to meet the slave-traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and religious today.” She looked at everything through the eyes of the wondrous treasure of faith, and the gift we receive is so great that it justified, she implied, many years in brutal slavery. As Pope Benedict wrote about her in Spe Salvi, “She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme ‘Paron,’ before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. … The hope born in her which had ‘redeemed’ her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.” Her experience of the Good Shepherd’s merciful triumph and the desire to share it with others became the great desire of her pure heart.
• Today we have begun this day by coming away from the crowds to be with Jesus, so that we might pray and fix our eyes on him, so that the Good Shepherd can teach us, feed us, lead us through whatever dark valleys we may be in, and enter into us through Holy Communion. Together with the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of the Good Shepherd, who shows us how to orient our entire existence to God and let our life develop as sheep hearing his voice, and through the intercession of St. Josephine, we pray that Jesus, our Good Shepherd and Parón, may help us in life to give his Father a continual sacrifice of praise and use our lips, after we receive Holy Communion, to confess his name by proclaiming the Good News to all we meet today.