Imitate the Good Shepherd

If we truly want to be good Christians, we need to imitate Christ as the Good Shepherd. That is to say we have to learn to complicate our life to look for those who are lost and not be contented with taking care of those who are already safe in the flock which, definitely, is already a complicated matter.

We have to complicate our life some more, willing to leave behind our comfort and convenience readily. Christ, in describing himself as the Good Shepherd, said that he was willing to lay down his life for his sheep. (cfr Jn 10,11-18) The immediate context of those words was in order to protect his sheep. But we can readily say also that his willingness to die for his sheep was meant also to look for the lost one.

We need to process this requirement of a good Christian as a good shepherd very slowly, and start to develop the proper attitude, skills, and virtues to fulfill it. We need to be strongly identified with Christ and then go through the details of how to meet this requirement.

Do we know what is to be lost, especially in today's context? It's easy to identify those who openly consider themselves as atheists, agnostics, heretics, etc., as lost. But there are those who may appear to be very pious and saintly but actually are also lost, even to a greater degree, because of their most deceptive inconsistency in their Christian life.

And there are those trapped in some kind of addiction, whether it be drugs, alcohol, sex, the internet, games, gambling, etc. These cases will require a lot of creative and patient interventions. Are we willing to tackle this challenge?

To be a good shepherd require us to always be observing people and being in the know regarding events, trends, fashions, signs of the times.

We should sharpen our skills of discerning and assessing the moral quality of a person's actuations or status, and of the different situations. We need to be ready with the appropriate criteria with which to judge these things. So you can just imagine the amount of prayer and study needed to attain this ideal.

If we truly care for people, we should arrive at that point where we get to know their strengths and weaknesses. We would be able to monitor the developments of their lives. We have to understand that to be immersed in God is to be immersed also in the lives of people. We cannot live in a cocoon. As Pope Francis always reminds us, we need to reach out to the peripheries.

To be a Good Shepherd, we should be willing to get dirty, truly patient, and hopeful despite the difficulties and likely setbacks we will experience along the way.

What makes things more exciting is that while we should be ready to look for the lost, we should also see to it we don't lose those who are already safe in the flock. So this means we must have the right priorities in organizing our day.

We cannot sacrifice our prayer life, family life, professional life, just to search for the lost. Or better said, we just have to know how to put all these competing goals together.

I suppose this is the reason why to be truly Christian, to be truly a saint, one would really need to be heroic, making extraordinary sacrifices when the need arises. It cannot be any other way. We need to know how to undertake great sacrifices.