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16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B | Like sheep without a shepherd

Christ as Good Shepherd with Apostles and lambs, Sarcophagus, 4th century, relief, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican.

Christ as Good Shepherd with Apostles and lambs, Sarcophagus, 4th century, relief, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican.

We’re all looking for a leader, whether we realise it or not.  This week, The Australian reported that ‘tipoffs to the National Security Hotline in Australia’s largest state have increased tenfold in two years’.

[NSW Police Force Counter Terrorism Command Head, Mark Murdoch] said that in 2013 NSW police received just 769 referrals from the National Security Hotline, which was set up in 2002 by the Howard government as a clearing-house for information from the public.

Last year, that figure jumped to 4600. This year, NSW police are projecting an estimated 6900 referrals, an almost tenfold increase on the figures of just two years ago.

…He said his officers often had just hours in which to thwart deadly terror attacks.  Increasingly those attacks were either inspired or assisted by jihadists in Syria or Iraq, with the offenders getting younger and younger. Schoolchildren as young as 14 were ­falling under the spell of Islamic State, Mr Murdoch said.

These children are hungry for a leader, like sheep looking for a shepherd, except that they’ve attached themselves to evil shepherds, who are inspired by Satan himself.  The news media will always attribute this to the wrong causes, because they do not understand the workings of Satan in the world.  By contrast, the people in today’s Gospel are also described as ‘sheep without a shepherd’, but God rescues them by coming in his own person.  Jesus ‘took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.’  Let us pray that more of the lost sheep in our country will recognise the voice of the Good Shepherd, and that God will raise up strong evangelists and leaders in the Church.

Download this Sunday’s readings:,

Word format: Year B 16th Sunday 2015

Pdf format: Year B 16th Sunday 2015

For more on this, listen to Fr Barron’s homily, Looking for a Shepherd.

And for a word study on today’s readings, go to Dr John Bergsma’s commentary, The Shepherd Teaches the Flock.

 


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4th Sunday of Lent | Why do so many prefer darkness to light?

The Crucifixion, Isenheim Altarpiece, centre panel, Matthias Grünewald, 1512-1516, chapel of the Hospital of Saint Anthony, Isenheim, Germany, c. 1510-15, oil on wood, 9' 9 1/2" x 10' 9" Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France.

The Crucifixion, Isenheim Altarpiece, centre panel, Matthias Grünewald, 1512-1516, chapel of the Hospital of Saint Anthony, Isenheim, Germany, c. 1510-15, oil on wood, 9′ 9 1/2″ x 10′ 9″ Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France.

This week we saw the tragic death of 18 year old Australian suicide bomber, Jake Bilardi.  In a blog post from January 13, Bilardi says, “And that is where I sit today, waiting for my turn to stand before Allah (azza wa’jal) and dreaming of sitting amongst the best of His creation in His Jannah, the width of which is greater than the width of the heavens and the Earth.’’

How sad that in his search for God, he found the wrong one.  Carolyn Moynahan, in her article, Why do kids desert the West to fight with Isis, written well before Jake’s death, hits the nail on the head in her analysis.  And as Greg Sheridan says in his article in The Australian, “how long can the West live off the moral capital of religious conviction that it is now abandoning? The West is the only part of humanity abandoning religious belief. Can societies in which there is no overarching idea beyond the individual compete successfully in the long run?”

In our readings today, John invites us to turn to the right God while there is still time:

For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world,
but so that through him the world might be saved.
No one who believes in him will be condemned;
but whoever refuses to believe is condemned already

Of course, Westerners are likely to balk at the word ‘condemned’.  But of course it’s not God who condemns you, it’s your refusal to seek him that does.

Download today’s readings here:

Word format: Year B Lent 4th Sunday 2015

Pdf format: Year B Lent 4th Sunday 2015

To understand  how God can be both merciful and yet allow people to be condemned, read the homily from Sacerdos.  And listen to Fr Barron explain God’s tender mercy here.

Click-here-to-listen