TWENTY-SECOND LESSON
The Good Shepherd.
ST. LUKE 15:1-10.
Suppose a man to have a hundred sheep, of which he takes great care. One of them is lost; it has gone astray into the wilderness, and is in danger of being torn by the wolf, or falling down a precipice. Does he not leave the ninety-nine other sheep, and go after that one? When he has found it, does he not take it on his shoulders, and bring it home joyfully? does he not call his neighbors to rejoice with him that the strayed sheep has been brought back safe? Now, such is the persuasive parable by which our Blessed Lord shows us His love for a penitent sinner. This is a lesson which the Church sets before us in the Gospel. In another place, our Lord draws out this lesson more fully, as you may read in the tenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. He there calls Himself the Good Shepherd; and He proves His title by saying that He is even come to give His life for the sheep He loves so much. For our Lord did more for us than bring us home on His shoulders. On those Divine shoulders He bore for us the heavy Cross, along "the Way of the Cross," and up the weary hill of Calvary.
Hear how an ancient hymn addresses Him, regarding His saving Passion:
Beneath Thy Cross's weight foredone,
Stunned by Thy foes' malignant cries,
True Isaac, Thou, the Victim-Son, Dost mount the pyre of Sacrifice.
This was, indeed, the Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep. What unthankfulness for such a sacrifice, when they insist on breaking away from the fold, and straying back to the wilderness! They richly deserve to fall into the jaws of the wolf.
This parable of the Good Shepherd made a deep impression on the early Christians who were under persecution, while Rome was still a heathen city; when they had to burrow underground to save their lives. They lived, for days and weeks together, in subterranean passages, and heard Mass and received Communion in dark and close subterranean chapels: as wretched as could be, but consoled by the glorious hopes that belong to sufferers for Christ. To keep before their very eyes the tender love of the Good Shepherd, Who had brought them out of their heathen sins to the knowledge and love of Himself, they painted this image on the rocky walls of their living tomb. Nay, more. To show there was no sin so great that He would not pardon on sincere repentance and worthy fruits of penance, they painted Him sometimes as carrying a goat, not a sheep, on His shoulders. A goat! that is, a sinner who would have found himself on the left hand of the Judge at the last day, unless the Lord Himself, the future Judge, had come to save him, and had given him grace to repent, and so to escape the judgment in store for impenitent souls.
How earnestly we should see to it, that we are true penitents, bringing forth worthy fruits of penance; blotting out past sins with tears of true contrition; "washing our robes, and making them white in the Blood of the Lamb." That Sacred Blood of the Good Shepherd, as we know well, is poured over us in the Sacrament of Penance. However foul the soul may be, and deeply stained with sin, when the poor sinner goes into the confessional, yet let him only give a plain account of those sins, with a sincere desire that the priest should understand him, and with a determination to break them off, and break off the occasions that have led to them—he will find the Good Shepherd waiting for him in that confessional. The penitent may be more like a goat than a sheep; nay, he may have been more like a wolf or a swine than either. That is not the question; the question is this: Is he a humble penitent? Has he done his best to make a real act of contrite sorrow? Is he going to make it over again, while the Good Shepherd gives him absolution? Has he striven to place before his conscience the great evil of sin, its dreadful punishment and doom, its ingratitude against the love of God and His goodness? Will he leave it, and watch against it, for these motives? Then the Good Shepherd is waiting for him in the confessional. He will bring him home on His shoulders; home from the wilderness into which he has strayed, safe home from that cruel wolf, the devil, who opened his jaws for him; home to His own fold, where saints and angels are waiting to receive him, and rejoice over him.
And now, if you follow that pardoned sinner out of the confessional to the altar-rails, and from thence to his home, to his family and his employments, surely you will see a changed man. You will see a man who is now as anxious to do good to others as he may have done harm to their souls. His words, his acts, his whole example, will show a carefulness, a sense that our Lord expects something from him, and has not pardoned him for nought. The word of Christ to those He forgives, is this: "Go, and now sin no more." "Sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee." "Go into thy house to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had mercy on thee."
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