Actions of the Good Shepherd

The psalmist from the texts of the Roman Catholic Lectionary today praises the judgement of the Lord. This aspect of God often brings fear to people. The psalmist expresses joy. Friar Jude Winkler comments on the setting of the passage from the Book of the prophet Isaiah. The people are in exile in Babylon and the author combats their conviction that God is a harsh task master who has judged and punished them harshly with the image of God as shepherd who will gather the lambs in His arm and lead them home. Friar Jude adds that Psalm 23, the extremely powerful praise of God as Shepherd comes from the time of the Babylonian exile. The image of the Shepherd from the Gospel of Matthew may be understood as being quite radical viewed from the market economy bias of modern life. It may have been in Jesus time that those who were the hired hand (John 10.12) would run away when the sheep were threatened. The Good Shepherd attends to the least significant and brings them back to the fold. This radical, inefficient, uneconomic, rash, impractical action is example for followers of the Way. We are in tension with our obligation to the many, the amount of time we have and our distractions to take care of ourselves. The Bible which celebrates Shepherd God may only be “read” by some sheep through our example.