Sunday, 4/17/16
Jesus said, “My sheep
hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
The family of an Irish priest friend of mine kept sheep, and
as a boy he had led them out to graze, bringing them home at night; but they
never followed him. He had to use a switch on them. So taking a trip to the
Holy Land a few years ago, he wanted to see if shepherds over there today could
get the sheep to follow them.
He found that they did. Five families with small flocks each,
maintained a common sheep fold where their shepherd boys left the sheep penned
together at night. Then in the morning, the
shepherd boys would each in turn arrive a the gate of the sheepfold. There he
would make his own kind of clicking sound, and it would rouse only the sheep of
his own flock. Leaving the others to sleep, they would come to the gate; then
follow their own shepherd boy up into the hills.
The shepherd boy would have been their for the lambing of
each of his sheep, and following his voice was all they would have ever known.
Paragraph nineteen of the Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World states that we have a similar life-long relationship with our Lord.
“The dignity of man rests above all on this, that he is called to communicate
with God, and this invitation to converse with him comes at the first moment of
our being.”
Forty years ago wen I was teaching high school here, that Irish priest
reported me to the bishop for my lack of stern discipline, but that was before he
saw the shepherd leading his sheep without using a switch on them.
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