Sunday, July 21 2024
16rd Sunday During the Year – Year B

1st reading: Jeremiah 23,1-6
Psalm: 22 (23), 1-2ab, 2c-3, 4, 5, 6
2rd reading: Ephesians 2, 13-18
Gospel: Mark 6,30-34

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“When Jesus disembarked, he saw a large crowd. He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began to teach them at length.. Free from diktat of the seven minutes, Jesus taught the people at length, he nourished them with his word. The heart of Jesus is the heart of the Good Shepherd so proclaimed by the prophets. The heart of Jesus expresses, in our humanity, what is from the beginning in the heart of God. When in the third chapter of Genesis, after the original sin, God seeks man by saying to him: “Where are you? », it is this heart of a good shepherd, of a good Shepherd which speaks and which already looks at man like sheep without a shepherd. And all of Holy History is the story of this search for God who seeks to reach man, who seeks to take care of man, as the shepherd takes care of his sheep. In the psalm that we sang, we are told of all this compassion and all this love of the shepherd for his sheep. Alas, those whom God chose among his people to bring close to the shepherd who is God, the priests whom he ordained, have not always exercised their ministry according to the heart of God. And we heard it in the first reading: God does not curse, but reproaches the bad shepherds who let the sheep scatter, who let them die. And he announces that he will take care of the flock and that there will be shepherds who will take care of the sheep. 

The great and good Shepherd is Jesus. And now, through the sacrament of orders, men are associated with the work of the Good Shepherd to make Christ the Good Shepherd present. And these men who are thus called and ordained must learn to live in imitation of the Good Shepherd. You know how Saint Teresa, on her trip to Rome, will discover that the priests are poor fellows and that we must pray a lot for them, because they are poor sinners like the others. But however, it is not because they are poor sinners that they do not have to manifest this kindness and this compassion of the Good Shepherd for all the sheep...

But it is not only the ministers of the Church who have to be good shepherds because, through baptism and by the gift of the Holy Spirit in confirmation, we are all associated, we are all members of Christ the Good Shepherd. . In a certain way, we all, as baptized people, have to demonstrate the compassion of the Good Shepherd for everyone. 

How do we look at the crowds, those who parade on our screens? How do we look at crowds that often let off steam? How do we look at those we meet on the beaches, those we meet in theaters, those we meet in the street, those we see through our screens in this or that gathering, whether they are sports or others ? 

How do we look at them? Do we look at them with this look of Jesus, this look of compassion and never contempt? He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.. Yes, the Lord has called us to work with him, and we have to enter into his gaze. 

When at Christmas 86, Thérèse experienced this conversion which she calls her “complete conversion”, she received the grace of charity and she wrote this:

[Jesus] made me a fisher of souls, I felt a great desire to work for the conversion of sinners, a desire that I had not felt so keenly... I felt, in a word, charity entering my heart, the need to forget myself to please and since then I have been happy!..

MsA 45v

Thérèse experiences two intimately united things: she experiences her own conversion, she is touched by the love of Jesus and she understands that she can rely completely on him. She understands that this charity which dwells in the heart of Jesus, he gives it to her, and that she can therefore be internally at peace, that she is truly loved by Jesus. 

But by the same token, she understands that every man is loved as she herself is loved. And so immediately, she has this desire to save souls, that is to say, to cooperate in this action of the Good Shepherd. And from now on, she will look at the souls of poor sinners as Jesus looks at them: with compassion.

It is this grace that we must ask of the Lord through the intercession of Saint Thérèse.

Amen