Ordinary Time, 16th Sunday (B) Bad leaders confuse and scatter. Good leadership leads to clarity, unity, and peace. The clarity comes from a respect for truth. The unity comes from the love for the sheep. Being led according to truth and love leads to peace. The Apostles are being good shepherds by bringing people to the Good Shepherd.
Have you seen the news about the National Eucharistic Congress? The whole Catholic church in the USA went away for a weekend with Jesus. The news from the congress is full of peace and joy, unity, and clarity.
I have three suggestions for how to follow your Good Shepherd:
- Realize that the Good Shepherd is walking with you. Learning to notice Jesus' ongoing presence in your daily life will lead to clarity, unity, and peace.
- Pray for your leaders to be good leaders.
- Each of us can lead our family, school, classroom, or friends. Lead like the Good Shepherd!
(21 Jul 2024)
Going Deeper: How have you seen Jesus' good leadership in the news about the National Eucharistic Congress?
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I am Father Joel and welcome to Pilgrim Priest. I am grateful to all of our supporters, especially Duke Kevin and Peggy, who have been mission partners for three years now. You can learn more about it at patreon.com/pobrombreast. Thank you, Kevin and Peggy, and thank you for tuning in today. God bless you. ♪♪♪ Apparently, there's nothing new about bad leadership. Bad leadership is a problem all throughout Scripture, as it talks about some of the kings of the Jews were good leaders, but many of them were bad leaders. And so God is speaking to these bad leaders, and he's saying that you haven't shepherded my flock well, and they have become confused and scattered as a result of it. So I'm going to step in, and I'm going to gather you from all the lands from which the sheep have been scattered and bring them back to their meadow. This is clearly a reference to the Babylonian captivity to that moment when God gathers the Jewish people back from the different lands that they were scattered and enables them to once again live in the land of Palestine. But then he goes on to predict that he will raise up a righteous shoot to David, and this one will shepherd his sheep rightly. Clearly, this is a prophecy of the coming of Jesus, that Jesus is the good shepherd. These are true shepherd, and that he in the person of Jesus Christ God is shepherding his own people. Good leadership leads not to confusion and scattering, but good leadership leads to clarity, and it leads to unity. Clarity because good leadership is rooted in the truth and respects the truth. You'll notice that leaders who want to dominate or control their people also want to control the narrative. They want to control the story. They want to make sure that it's told in a particular way and exclude other viewpoints, because they realize that control of the truth enables people to believe what they want them to believe. Jesus isn't that kind of leader because Jesus is the way the truth and the life. The truth leads us to him, but it also gives us a sense of clarity. So good leadership, rooted in the leadership of Jesus Christ, is a leadership that respects the truth, and through that respect of the truth brings clarity. A second characteristic we see of good leaders is a sense of unity. Bad leadership leads to a sort of rigid conformity. This is exactly how you do it. You must do it my way. But bad leadership can also be vague and unclear and create lots of space where problems and issues are not cleared up. And then that's sort of either dominating or excessively lax leadership. There can be lots of disunity. There can be lots of people fighting and disagreements and scattering. The unity that Jesus brings is not, here's how everyone has to do it exactly, the unity that Jesus brings is rooted in love, a love for the sheep, a care for each and every one of his sheep, the sheep feeling valued and heard, but all of them having a place. And because of their love from the shepherd, each sheep is able to love fellow sheep to not see them as competition. The leadership of Jesus brings unity. In our second reading it refers to this ancient division between the Jews and the Gentiles, the Jewish people who were following Abraham had been called by God, worshiped the one true God, and Gentiles basically everyone else who didn't know God for themselves who sort of had invented their own religions and were doing their own thing. Well, Jesus comes not just for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles and he comes to unite them in his one body. So he comes to bring peace to those who were near, which are the Jews, and to those who were far, which are the Gentiles. We see Jesus is the unity that comes from the Holy Spirit. The same spirit is given to all and it brings them into communion with Jesus. Jesus himself is the source of unity, and so that's what St. Paul is referring to as the Jews and Gentiles are gathered into one community, into one body of Christ. And then the third thing that we see from good leadership is he is our peace, it says. The good leadership leads to peace, to peace for the people. Now I'm not saying that there will never be controversies, but when you're being led well, when you're being led according to truth and love, there's a sense of peace that happens as a result of that. And so we see Jesus' attentiveness in the gospel reading to the needs of his disciples, not just their spiritual needs, but that Jesus loves them not just for what they can do for him, but he loves them for who they are. And he sees that they need rest and he invites them to come away to a deserted place for rest. Well as he's inviting them to come away to this deserted place, the crowds gather and they figure out where Jesus is going and so when the disciples get to the supposedly vacation spot, this chance to get away, the crowds are already there. And Jesus has pity on them because they're like sheep without a shepherd. His apostles accept his leadership. They let Jesus be their Lord and therefore they have a good shepherd. But the rest of the crowds have not accepted the leadership of Jesus and so they're like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus teaches them many things. He shares the truth with them. But this is also the fruit of good evangelization. The apostles are not meeting the needs of the sheep. The apostles are helping the sheep come to know their good shepherd and it's Jesus himself who shepherds them. I don't know if any of you have been tuning in to the National Eucharistic Congress that's happening in Indiana this week, 51,000 Catholics from all over the United States have gathered for a giant Eucharistic Congress and there's mass, there's adoration, there's praise and worship music, there's prayer time. There's processions, there's keynote speakers from some really notable Catholics. So I've been kind of tuning in a little bit if you hope you've been watching on EWTN or listening through relevant radio but there's plenty also on social media. You can find stuff on Twitter, X and it's just really neat to see the people who are there. I'm also getting texts from a few friends that are there. There's a real sense of joy and there's a real sense of peace and as you watch there's a real unity that's brought by this tangible presence of Jesus. It's as if the whole church were to get away for a weekend with the Lord, were to go to a deserted place with Jesus in there, experience what it's like to be shepherded by the good shepherd, to experience that clarity, that unity and that peace that comes from our good shepherd. Now all of us can't get away to Indiana for Eucharistic Congress but coming to Mass and Sunday you are in fact getting away for a little time with the good shepherd, an opportunity to experience a little bit of clarity, a little bit of unity and a deeper sense of peace. How can we keep that going throughout the week? I think the first thing is for us to realize that no matter what's going on in the world around us, Jesus is still the Lord. No matter what terrible things are happening in national politics, Jesus is still the Lord. No matter what storms are battering us both physically but also emotionally or spiritually, Jesus is still the Lord so we can have confidence in our good shepherd and in God's plan for the world. I think one of the things that steals our peace is worrying about where it's going, where it's going to happen but you'll notice that in our soul it says the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want and then it says I fear no evil for you or with me and I think it's key for us to begin to discern to notice that ongoing presence of Jesus in our life. Yes, Jesus is here and you can get away with him but Jesus is still with you and he's walking with you in your everyday life. So often we face the storms and difficulties of life thinking we have to figure it out ourselves thinking we're going to be facing it alone when in reality the Lord is with us and he's walking with us. So us being attentive to our shepherds ongoing presence in our life to really walking with Jesus to sharing with him our difficulties or struggles to be able to experience his peace right in that moment right in that time and so walking with our good shepherd. Not just seeing him as a sort of distant shepherd who's got it figured out in the long run but realizing that our shepherd actually walks with us spiritually today I think that's really key for walking with the good shepherd and for experiencing clarity and unity and peace. The second thing I would say is that we should pray for our leaders. Bad leadership is nothing new and it's just been a struggle throughout history but pray for good leaders at every level of society pray for our Pope and our bishops pray for our national and local leaders pray for me pray for your parents if you're a kid a lot of kids like to complain about their parents but how many kids make time to pray that mom and dad can be the best possible parents your parents need your prayers all of our leaders need our prayers so let's pray for good leadership. And then the last thing I would say is that each of us is called in some way to incarnate the good shepherd each of us has an opportunity to lead. Now that may be as a leader of the family as a husband or a wife as a father or a mother may be the leader of a company perhaps you own a business perhaps it's just leading in your classroom leading within your community maybe it's being a leader in your class you're not the oldest in your family and none of your siblings listen to you but among friends you can be a good leader all of us are called to model the leadership of the good shepherd to lead an accord with the truth which brings clarity to lead an accord with love which brings unity and that sense of good leadership leads to peace so it invites you to sort of incarnate in your own life the example that we've seen from the good shepherd I'll only be a good shepherd to you if I'm first a good sheep to the good shepherd himself and my role is not to do everything I can't possibly provide for all the needs of my sheep but by being a good shepherd I can lead you to Jesus and help you experience the unity and peace that comes from him. So let's first of all walk with our good shepherd second of all pray for our leaders and then third show our let our good shepherd show us how we too can be good shepherds. [Music] Against the advice of their friend German shepherds started going out with one of the sheep from his own flock and after two or three days the sheep said I don't want to date you anymore she said well why is that he said you're too controlling she said where are you getting that from she says you heard me you you heard me. (audience laughing)
