Who will follow the shepherd?
God or truth (God is truth) cannot be confined or defined by momentary human occurrences. He is greater than any one sliver of time in human history. If He could be so contained, I don’t think he would be God at all, and thus, not worthy of worship, but mere convenience.
God calls me out of time, so I come to Him daily because I desire to leave time and be in His presence. I want to hear Him while the soundless hush of dawn lulls me into full attention and devotion, away from the day’s reach. How else could I come before Him but to offer my solitude before my unuttered thoughts seep and rise toward daylight?
Reverberating and quite audible to me as I pray these days for anyone touched by COVID-19 (and this is everyone) is the parable of the lost sheep. I ask, “Why this parable, Lord?”
Confused about what God is trying to say, the weight of His answer settles on me as I sift through my thoughts. I put aside my preconceptions about the parable and listen. I pray, “What do you want me to see, Lord?” Patience in His presence yields answers to anyone chancing humility.
Looking not for what I understood, my mind settled on the 99. I always took for granted the 99 sheep who were not lost. Never did I consider their place in the story. But, there they are, maybe not significant, but not superfluous, either. Their placement demanded my attention as much as I give it to God in each morning’s silent hum of quietude.
I noticed the 99, at least, were indifferent to the one lost and were probably bothered by the interruption. Nothing in the story suggests any of them wanted to help or cared. Their normal disturbed, they huddled together and kept to themselves as though it was safer for the shepherd to handle the matter. Sheep don’t possess cognition, but they serve well as metaphors. Maybe the Holy Spirit was metaphorically absent in all but the shepherd. In the parable, the 99 failed to take care of the one lost.
In this Covid world, ample stories abound about shepherds. Each offers affirmation, a warm assurance of God’s presence, like my suspended mornings. But everywhere are reminders of the 99 forgetting the consequences, detached and indifferent to the one lost. In this slivered history, who will follow the Shepherd and who will huddle with the 99? Isn’t it time to leave the flock and follow the Shepherd?
Temptation overtakes a life absent the Holy Spirit. Forgiveness looks in the face of remembrance and loves in spite of. In this strange new reality, I try to remember this.
Anne Lamott wrote, “This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we’re most sure that love can’t conquer all, it seems to anyway.”
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8, NKJV).
Catholic schools have faced tough times for years, but the pace of closures is accelerating dramatically amid economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, sparking heartbreak and anger in scores of affected communities.
“It’s not a pretty picture right now,” said Sister Dale McDonald, public policy director of the National Catholic Educational Association, which says about 100 schools have announced in recent weeks that they won’t reopen this fall. McDonald fears that number could more than double in the coming months.
Most of the closures are occurring at the elementary level, but also on the list are a number of venerable and beloved high schools including some that produced some famous alumni.
The Institute of Notre Dame, a girls’ school in Baltimore founded in 1847, is due to close on June 30, to the dismay of alumnae like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Immaculate Conception Cathedral School of Memphis, Tennessee, another girls’ institution, is also shutting down after 98 years; it’s where Priscilla Beaulieu finished her senior year while dating husbandto-be Elvis Presley.
Closures in New Jersey include Hammonton’s St. Joseph High School, which has won more than 20 state football championships, and Cristo Rey high school in Newark, which was highly praised for its work helping students from low-income families go to college. Founded in 2007, Cristo Rey says every one of its graduates from the last 10 years had been accepted at colleges.
This year’s closures will reduce the number of Catholic K-12 schools in the United States to about 6,000, down from more than 11,000 in 1970, according to the Catholic education association. Overall enrollment has plummeted from more than 5 million in the 1960s to about 1.7 million now.
“The loss of Catholic schools is a loss to America,” said Mary Pat Donoghue, executive director of the Catholic Education office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
She said the impact would be particularly severe in low-income inner city neighborhoods, generally populated mostly by blacks and Hispanics.
“No one in the non-public school sector has done better there than Catholic schools,” she said.
The long-term enrollment decline has resulted from demographic changes, parents’ difficulty affording tuition and competition from public and other private schools.
Factors related to the pandemic have only aggravated the problems.
Donoghue said many families have recently lost jobs and feel they can no longer pay tuitions averaging nearly $5,000 for elementary schools and more than $11,000 for high schools. Meanwhile, parishes that operate many of the schools lost much of their weekly collections after in-person services were halted.
Another factor: Spring is the prime season for school fundraisers, and many of those events had to be canceled.