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11 May 2014 - Fourth Sunday of Easter; Good Shepherd Sunday, Cycle A

Today’s good news: God cares! God sent God’s Son, the Good Shepherd, and the Holy Spirit to save the people. God guides and provides, the psalm says. But will humans reject these gifts? Or will they repent, hear the call, accept the blessing, and “live for righteousness”?

Shepherd guidance

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Sign & sacrament

28 Oct 2012 - Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Two tourists are sitting in a small, ancient church in Wales at twilight when a girl of about 12 enters holding the hand of a boy who must be her younger brother. As the two make their way forward, the girl gently guides the boy’s hand along the rough stone wall. They stop at a statue of Mary to trace her face and feel the cold marble folds of her gown. At that altar the girl places her brother’s hands around the candlesticks; he feels the tabernacle, and the crucifix. Then they leave. As the door closes behind them, one tourist remarks to the other, “Isn’t it a pity that boy couldn’t see how beautiful this church is?” Her companion replies, “Are you kidding? He saw more than either of us.”

guidance blind

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Exploring the word

15 May 2011 - Fourth Sunday of Easter; Good Shepherd Sunday, Cycle A

GOD HAS BEEN the shepherd of souls for a long time, biblically speaking. “The Lord is my shepherd,” declares the psalmist. “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock,” adds Deutero-Isaiah. There will be one shepherd whose authority is final, Ezekiel avows. This elevation of the shepherd to divine icon is odd, because the meandering herder was viewed with disdain by villagers and city-dwellers. Shepherds were dirty, uncivilized people more like the wilderness they inhabited than the genteel and governed citizenry. Yet God is identified as an über-shepherd. Not in the same way the Lord is “king,” a title automatically conferring esteem. God is shepherd because of what the herder does: guide and guard. God is also shepherd because of the inauspicious nature of the sheep, identified with us. Jesus adopts this title agreeably for both reasons: because he sees himself as the responsible, watchful shepherd and because he knows firsthand the low-functioning acuity and high vulnerability of his flock. Jesus is also granted the title of king later, by no less an office than the Roman procurator. What’s noteworthy is that church leaders in the following generations, while they may suit up as kings and sit on throne-like chairs, will identify with the title episkopoi, “shepherd.” Before the end of the 1st century, Saint Paul’s farewell speech at Miletus as presented in Acts 20 will include the image of flocks protected from wolves by their appointed overseers. The crosier each bishop carries today is a reminder of this identification: The shepherd has risen from a despised laboring class to an ecclesiastical appointment. You can take the shepherd out of the field, but you shouldn’t take the herder’s humility out of the episkopoi. Today we intercede for our present shepherds and hope for their betterment, not to mention a swelling of their ranks. Despite the ceremonial robes, our shepherds share a task rich with humility, burdened by the care of souls still vulnerable to the dangers of the wilderness. Maybe the wolves are not the same packs prowling around Paul’s early flocks, but the need for sure guidance and vigilance is the same. All of us have responsibilities for church leadership: some to seek ordination or consecrated life, others to support the shepherds in prayer, attentiveness, and sharing of resources. But most of all we have to embrace the mutual humility of this relationship, whether as leaders or followers. Related scripture links Role of repentance: Lev. 5:5; Isa. 1:16-18; Ezek. 36:25-26; Mark 1:14; Luke 5:32 Radical nature of baptism: Rom. 6:3-11 No longer I who live: Gal. 2:20 Parthians, Medes, etc.: Acts 2:7-11 Shepherd imagery: Jer. 23:1-4; Mic. 5:3; Ezek. 34:11-24; Matt. 18:12-14, 25:31-46; Luke 15:3-7; 1 Pet. 5:1-4 Catechism links Shepherd: CCC 754; 764; 2158 Repentance in Acts: CCC 363; 1226; 1287; 1427-1429; 1433

Authors Alice Camille

church leaders guidance episkopoi responsibility acts 20

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Iranians elect to protest

21 Jun 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday’s first reading the Lord addresses Job out of a storm. In response to a storm of protest, Iran’s supreme leader reversed course this week and ordered an investigation into allegations of election fraud in last Friday’s presidential election. Earlier having called the reelection of Mahmud Ahmadinejad a “divine assessment,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Monday directed a high-level clerical panel to look into the charges of fraud. The move was not enough to placate supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who have daily taken to the streets of Tehran to protest. Tuesday the country’s most senior Islamic cleric, an opponent of Khamenei, threw his weight behind charges that Ahmadinejad’s reelection was rigged. “No one in their right mind can believe” the official results from Friday’s contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi’s charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers “in the worst way possible.” In an effort to quash media coverage, the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued a ban on foreign news reporting of rallies in Tehran, revoked the credentials of those with temporary visas, and ordered them to leave the country as soon as possible. Cell phone service was cut in the city. To counter these restrictions a U.S. State Department official Monday emailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: Delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran. The State Department said its request did not amount to meddling in Iranian affairs because the department did not contact Twitter until three days after the vote was held and well after the protests had begun. Source: Articles by Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay for McClatchy Newspapers, Mark Landler and Brian Stelter for the New York Times, and Hashem Kalantari and Fredrik Dahl for Reuters

twitter ministry of culture and islamic guidance ali khamenei hossein ali montazeri tehran mir hossein mousavi fraud mahmud ahmadinejad election iran state department

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