The image used throughout today’s Scripture readings1 is a familiar one: Christ as the Good Shepherd. This beautiful image for Christ gives us confidence that the Lord provides for our needs, not just with the bare minimum, but superabundantly. It likewise assures us that, amidst all the dangers we encounter in this life, we have someone Who protects us. Psalm 23, the Responsorial for today, speaks to both of these elements of provision and protection: “In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me”; “You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
Today’s Gospel, though, adds another element that we might not typically associate with the image of the Shepherd: our need for Truth. “[T]hey were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” If you think about it, it seems like “teaching” doesn’t really follow from the crowds being ”like sheep.” You don’t teach sheep; you just lead them where you want them to go. So why doesn’t Mark say, “They were like students without a teacher”? What’s going on here?
Maybe we could think about it this way. Both sheep and we need to be led; the shepherd leads his sheep, and Christ leads us. But of course, how sheep need to be led and how we need to be led are different: sheep need to be herded and driven externally by force; but the way that human beings should be led is internally, by Truth.
We might think that freedom means we act “just because we want to”; but no one wants to act based on what he or she considers a lie. This is how it always is: We are “led” to hold certain positions precisely because we believe something is true. For example, pro-life advocates are compelled to stand up against any threats to the dignity of human life, because they are convinced that human life begins at conception; that a human being is always a person no matter what stage of development; that the direct, intentional killing of an innocent person is murder; and, that murder is a great evil that the State has a responsibility to prevent. The direction of our action is determined by what we think is true: we are led by Truth. So if Christ is going to “shepherd” us in the sense, not just of providing for us and protecting us, but in the sense of leading us, He must teach us.
Yet today, Truth is under threat in at least two ways. First, by outright denial: it is claimed that what is true for you may not be what is true for me. This is known as ”relativism,” which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger famously called a “dictatorship.” Secondly, Truth is under threat by mistrust: we can no longer trust that what seems obvious is in fact true, because anything can be easily manipulated by artificial “intelligence.” For instance, how do we know that this person actually said something, when his voice can be recreated technologically? How do we know from a photograph that this person was physically there, or that this person even exists, when a photo can be generated by DALL-E or Midjourney?It can be easy today to just throw up our hands and think we can live without Truth. One of the more subtle, but perhaps one of the more important, lessons for us from today’s Gospel is that we need to be led by Truth, and only Christ can ultimately offer us the Truth. We need Christ, the Good Shepherd, Who is the way, the Truth, and the life, to lead us.
- July 21, 2024, the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. ↩︎