Catholic Halos

There are two beams of the cross: Justice and Mercy. Shepherding occurs at the intersection of those beams, the crux of the cross. Today's shepherds, as shepherds throughout Church history, are awakening to the need for both beams. Those who predominately brandish the vertical beam, the law of the Church, are realizing that God calls them to meet people where they are, on the road to Emmaus and join them on that journey. Those who predominantly embrace the horizontal beam, the grace of Christ through the Church, are realizing God calls them to challenge those they journey with toward justice, so that mercy may be granted. Amidst it all, the Church is also awakening to the presence of a rising tide of evil poison that has seeped into society and the Church through the air and the water, for well over one-hundred years: modernism in it's many flavors: scientism, communism, socialism, and progressivism. The wolves are in our midst and we need shepherds to wield the authority of Christ in His Church against it for the shepherding of souls to eternal life.

What is Shepherding and How Do We Shepherd?

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. – Saint Mother Teresa, “A Simple Path”

A growing number of voices from various strata in the Church lament the decline of shepherding and resulting harm, including hopelessness. Saint Mother Teresa sums this poverty of shepherding up with poignant, painful clarity. This post will explore what it means to shepherd, and to fail to shepherd, using Saint Augustine's 'Sermon on Pastors' from a fortnight's series of second readings in the Office of Readings.

Our intentional sharing of this diaconal call, this pilgrim’s progress.

(Note: This is the first in an ongoing series written for the deacons of the Diocese of Colorado Springs)

Dear Brother Deacons in Christ,

Oh! How blessed we are to, together, serve our invisible, our poor, our outcast! How blessed are we to bring them the Word of Christ through the clay of our bodies, as the least members of His clergy! How blessed each of you able to bring these lost sheep back to the full body of Christ through the gift of serving at Mass! Cherish every moment of love and sacrifice as the gift it is, for Christ may see fit to focus your ministry elsewhere, anytime. As servants, we bow in humility, and go where we are told, do what is asked of us, and of equal import, do not do what is not ours to do. For we are but one member of a body of many members, each with our own calling. How beautiful! When, in humility, we each answer our call, Christ coordinates our efforts and His grace in ways we sometimes are blessed to glimpse after the fruit.

How different would your favorite movie or television show be if one, or all, of the characters wrestled with temptation but instead chose virtue over vice? No sex outside marriage (one man, one woman, for life) being a primary example.

Sin twists our vision like we are wearing a pair of invisible fun house glasses. Our vision is skewed, twisted, topsy-turvy. Instead of “up” being up, we are turned around so we think up is a squiggly line to the lower left; true left as a spiral to the upper right, and so on. Each person’s pair of sin’s fun house glasses distorts reality differently. Thus, if you tell me to turn left, I take an erratic lower right backwards, believing I am following your instructions.

Weird as all this looks to an outside observer, everything seems normal, even if most other people are doing things that make no sense.

Jesus said: “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:30). How do we apply the beautiful faith Jesus gives us to the chaos of daily life? The equation is simple. If you feel burdened, weighed down ... you're not bearing Christ's yoke, you're bearing the yoke of sin. Ooof.