A Shepherd Who Knows the Sheep

Fr. Henri Boulad, S. J.

A Shepherd Who Knows the Sheep

Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2010

Acts 13:14, 43-52 Revelation 7:9, 14b-17 John 10:11-18

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Glory to you, Lord.

Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd. The Father loves Me because I am willing to give up my life, in order that I may receive it back again. No one takes my life away from me. I give it up of my own free will. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it back again. For the Father has given Me this right.”

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Introduction
Good Shepherd Sunday

The fourth Sunday of Easter, whether in liturgical cycle A, B or C, is always Good Shepherd Sunday. The theme comes from the tenth chapter of John, which runs a litany of qualities of a good shepherd: A good shepherd leads the sheep by walking up front, and they gladly follow him. (Jn 10:3-4) A good shepherd feeds his hungry sheep by leading them to green pastures. (Jn 10:9) A good shepherd protects his sheep by warding off wolves and even by laying down his life for them, if necessary. (Jn 10:13-14) Finally, a good shepherd knows his sheep, and they, in turn, know him. (Jn 10: 15)

Only one Alleluia Verse

This last quality of a good shepherd is always singled out on Good Shepherd Sunday by the Alleluia Verse just before the gospel. All the Sundays of the year have three different alleluia verses (one for each of the three liturgical cycles) to announce the gospel. Good Shepherd Sunday, however, has only one Alleluia Verse which is repeated in all three cycles: "Alleluia! Alleluia! I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me.”

A lengthy letter to Benedict XVI

Fr. Henri Boulad, S.J., is an Egyptian Lebanese Jesuit of the Melkite rite. Born in 1931, he is 79 years old. He is four years `younger’ than Pope Benedict XVI who celebrated his 83rd birthday this past April 16. Boulad is rector of the Jesuit school in Cairo. He was superior of the Jesuits in Alexandria, regional superior of the Jesuits in Egypt, professor of theology in El Cairo, director of Caritas-Egypt, and vice president of Caritas International for the Middle East and North Africa. He has given conferences throughout Europe, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Belgium, etc. He has visited 50 countries on 4 continents and has published some 30 books in 15 languages--mainly in French, Arabic, Hungarian, and German.

In July of 2007 Fr. Boulad wrote a lengthy letter to Benedict (which in its entirety can be found on the Internet). It was a personal and private letter meant only for the Pope. The person who was to deliver it to Benedict, however, thought that it was inappropriate, and that it would hurt the Pope’s feelings. So he never delivered it! In 2009 a Canadian, who received the letter from Boulad as a personal and confidential document, started to circulate it on the Internet. Given this situation, Boulad, who had learned that his letter had never been delivered, thought the only fair thing to do was to send his letter to Pope Benedict through the official channel of the Papal Nuncio in Cairo, with a few words of apology. This he did in September of 2009. Till now, no answer has been received from the Vatican.

Shepherding the supreme shepherd

n his letter Boulad undertakes the very unique and courageous task of shepherding the supreme shepherd of the church – Benedict XVI. His letter begins:

Dear Holy Father,
I am addressing you directly because my heart bleeds at the sight of the abyss into which our Church is sinking today. Please excuse my frankness that is filial and dictated both by the “freedom of the children of God” to which St. Paul has called us, as well as by my passionate love for the Church. Perhaps you will excuse the alarmist tone of this letter, for I believe that it is already the eleventh hour and that confronting the present situation must not be further delayed.

Good shepherd Boulad knows the sheep.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Fr. Boulad is a good shepherd who knows the sheep. He knows that their number is constantly declining, and that the churches are becoming empty. His letter to the Benedict continues:

Religious practice is in constant decline. The churches of Europe and Canada are frequented only by an increasing number of aging people who will soon be gone. There will be nothing left to do but close churches or transform them into museums, mosques, club houses or municipal libraries – something that is already under way. What surprises me is that many churches are already in the process of renovation and modernization at great expense in order to attract the faithful. But it is not such things that will stop the exodus.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Boulad is a good shepherd who knows the sheep. He knows they are drifting away at a steady pace. He reminds the Pope that,

France, `the eldest daughter of the Church,’ and ultra-Catholic French Canada have made a 180 degree turn toward atheism, anti-clericalism, agnosticism and indifference. For a number of other European countries the process is on-going. One notices that the more a people has been nurtured and mothered by the Church the greater is the reaction against her. The apparent vitality of the Church in the Third World is deceptive. In all likelihood these new churches will sooner or later pass through the same crises as old Christian Europe.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Fr. Boulad is a good shepherd who knows not only the sheep but also their shepherds as well. He knows that a great majority of the church’s shepherds are old, tired and overworked. Again he reminds Benedict that,

the small number of those who still continue their ministry, and who are well past the retirement age, have to serve multiple parishes in an expeditious and administrative manner. Many of them, both in Europe as well as in the Third World, actually live in concubinage – in full view and knowledge of their parishioners who often approve them, and also in full view of their bishops who can do nothing about it, given the shortage of priests.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Fr. Boulad is a good shepherd who knows the sheep. He knows that the sheep are not listening to their supreme shepherd. His letter makes a point not easy for Rome to swallow:

In the matter of morality and ethics, the injunctions of the Magisterium,[1] repeated ad nauseam on marriage, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, divorce and remarriage, etc. touch nobody [do not touch the sheep] and only engender weariness and indifference in them. All these moral and pastoral problems deserve more than preemptory declarations. They deserve an approach that is pastoral, sociological, psychological and humane -- an approach that is more in keeping with the Gospel.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Fr. Boulad is a good shepherd who knows the sheep. He knows that they are grown-up adults. His letter makes another point that’s hard for Rome to swallow:

The Catholic Church, which had been the great European educator for centuries, seems to have forgotten that this same Europe has grown up. Adult Europe today
refuses to be treated like a child. The paternalistic style of a Mater et Magistra[2] (Mother and Teacher) Church is definitely off the mark and no longer fits the bill today. Our Christian people have learned to think for themselves and are not about to swallow whatever comes along.

Recounting the negatives

Boulad’s long S.O.S. letter to Benedict recounts not only negatives; the second part of the letter also suggests many meaningful positives. Boulad suggests, for example, that the Pope convoke a synod which would last for three years, and which would culminate in a general assembly (a kind of Vatican III) to bring together the results of the synod and draw necessary conclusions.

Recounting the negatives, however, reassures those of us who feel there’s something wrong with the church today that we are, indeed, on the right track and in good company. Recounting the negatives challenges us to come up with profound and positive thoughts of our own. Recounting the negatives invites us to participate in reforming a church which Boulad says is “dragging behind our times, after having led the world for centuries” and which used to be “the light of the world, the salt of the earth and a leaven in the dough.”

A soul-mate

Fr. Boulad, who undertook the very unique and courageous task of shepherding the Pope, has a soul-mate in Swizz German theologian Fr. Hans Küng. On Friday, April 16, 2010, Küng undertook the task of shepherding the Church’s thousands of bishops. This he did by means of a long and comprehensive letter addressed to the entire Roman Catholic episcopate. (The letter in its entirety can be found on the Internet). His letter begins:

Venerable Bishops,Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

Then Küng’s letter lists a litany of problems afflicting the Church. Among them he makes emphasized mention of clerical sex abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. He speaks angrily about the cover-up on the part of the highest authorities in the Church. Küng believes the Church is suffering its worst credibility crisis since Reformation. And he believes “a council [a kind of Vatican III] is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems afflicting the Church and calling for reform.” Fr. Boulad is an alarmed prophet; Fr. Küng is an angry prophet.

Boulad concludes his long and comprehensive letter with a captatio benevolentiae[3]:

Finally, Most Holy Father, I ask you to forgive my frankness and audacity, and beg your paternal blessing. Allow me to say that I live these days in your presence,thanks to your remarkable book, Jesus of Nazareth, which is the object of my spiritual reading and daily meditation.
Sincerely yours in the Lord,
P. Henri Boulad, sj

Conclusion
John: a shepherd who ”walked up front”

When the shepherd does not know the sheep, the sheep, in turn, do not know the shepherd and do not follow him. Then shepherd and sheep each go their separate way, but under a pretense and guise of being one. That pretense of being one pervades the Church. When, however, the shepherd knows the sheep, the sheep, in turn, know the shepherd, and then the two become one, as the two became one under the pontificate of Good Pope John XXIII.

When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, the cardinals elected Cardinal Angelo Roncalli who took the name of John XXIII. On the day of his `coronation,’ Nov. 4. 1958, against all tradition he rose to deliver the homily. People, he said, have different ideas about what the new pope should be: diplomat, scholar, statesman. The new pope, he said, has in mind the example of the good shepherd who knows his sheep and serves them. Then Good Shepherd John removed his triple tiered tiara, dismounted his sedia gestatoria[4] and “walked up front” as good shepherds do. And the Universal Church gladly ran after him for five very blessed but all too brief years.

[1] The church’s teaching authority
[2] “Mother and Teacher” – the opening words of Pope John’s encyclical on Christianity and Social Progress, May 15, 1961.
[3] A remark to gain good will
[4] A portable chair or throne hoisted on men’s shoulders, which carried the pope on solemn occasions -- no longer used.

A Man Who Resurrected God

Fr. Mychal Judge O.S.F
5/11, 1933 – 9/11, 2001

A Man Who Resurrected God

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010
Acts 10:34a, 37-43 Col 3:1-4 or I Cor 5:6b-8 Lk 24: 13-35
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.

Conversing on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-17)

That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him. He said to them, “You seem to be in deep discussion about something.” He asked, “What are you so concerned about?” They stopped short, sadness written across their faces.

“What happened there?”(Lk 24:18-24)

One of them named Cleopas answered, “You must be the only visitor to Jerusalem who doesn’t know what happened there these last days.” Jesus asked, “What happened there?” They answered: “Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, was sentence to death and crucifixion by our chief priests and rulers. But we were hoping that He would be the one to redeem Israel. Besides all this, it’s now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, surprised us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find His body. Then they came back and reported that they had, indeed, seen a vision of angels who announced that He was alive. Some of our people went straight off to the tomb, and sure enough, they found an empty tomb, just as the women had reported.”

“Stay with us, for it is nearly evening.” (Lk 24:25-29)

Jesus said in reply, “How dull you people are! How slow you are to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them what referred to Him in all the Scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, He gave the impression that He was going on farther. But they urged Him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So He went in to stay with them.

They recognized Him in the breaking of bread. (Lk 24:30-35)

And it happened that, while He was with them at table, He took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread. Then He vanished from their sight. The disciples said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” So they set out at once for Jerusalem where they found the eleven disciples gathered together with the others and saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the road to Emmaus, and how they recognized Him in the breaking of bread.

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

--------------
Introduction
Nietzsche’s dead God

German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) is famous for his strange but intriguing declaration that "God is Dead." In his work The Madman, he places the expression in the mouth of a demented man who declares,

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed Him. How shall we (murderers of all murderers) comfort ourselves? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has known has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to cleanse ourselves? (The Madman)

The awful power of Nazis to murder God

Nietzsche was right: man has the awful power to murder God. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis rampaged through Germany and in one night destroyed 7000 Jewish businesses and torched 191 synagogues. That date marks the beginning in earnest of the Holocaust. By the time the German Nazis had accomplished their `final solution of the Jewish problem,’ they had murdered six million Jews.

The most prominent fatality of the Holocaust, however, was God Himself. Elie Weisel, the Holocaust’s most prominent Jewish survivor, recounts in a little volume entitled Night his first evening in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. There he saw the bodies of little children going up in smoke from the crematories. He writes, “That was the night which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into dust. Never shall I forget it, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never! “

The awful power of Islamic terrorists to murder God

Nietzsche was right: man has the awful power to murder God. On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists crashed two 747’s into the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan, murdering 2800 innocent human beings. After ten months of grim labor, workers at ground zero, together with the families of victims of 9/11, gathered at a Staten Island landfill on July 15, 2002 to mark the end of a grueling and emotional ten-month operation which had hauled away 2,000,000 tons of debris, 1600 identified bodies and 20,000 body parts.

Again, the most prominent fatality of September 11 was God Himself! For New Yorkers God had been momentarily murdered on 9/11. One New Yorker, a security guard who lost more than thirty friends that awful day, said of that horrific event: “It was utterly barbaric the way their lives were taken. So I look at God now as a barbarian and I probably always will. My old God is dead, and I can’t bring Him back to life.”

The awesome power of man to resurrect God

Man, indeed, has the awful power to murder God, but man also has the awesome power to resurrect God from the dead! Fr. Mychal Judge (May 11, 1933— Sept 11, 2001) had such awesome power. A priest of the Franciscan Order and beloved chaplain of the NYC Fire Department Judge raised God from the dead for New Yorkers, when Islamist terrorist had murdered Him on 9/11.

On that apocalyptic day, chaplain Judge had rushed to ground zero where he became 9/11’s first recorded fatality. He had taken off his helmet to give the last rites to a dying fireman when suddenly a mass of debris came crushing down upon him. He died there on the spot, and his body wasreverently carried off by his fellow firefighters to nearby Episcopal St. Paul's chapel at 209 Broadway. There it was reverently laid on an altar. That solemn drama of Fr. Judge’s last moments crowned a life of extraordinary unselfishness.

Fr. Judge, the sinner

New Yorkers knew that Fr. Judge was a restless and pained man who wrestled with his own private demons. He was a recovering alcoholic and an outspoken AA advocate. He was earthy, streetwise, and well-attuned to the character and chaos of their big city. He used language `unbefitting the cloth’. “Look man,” he’d tell an alcoholic, “you’re not a bad person. You have a disease which makes you think you’re bad, and that’s going to f… you up.”

New Yorkers also knew that Fr. Judge was a gay man. He opened the doors of the well-known Church of St. Francis of Assisi on 31st Street in Upper Manhattan to Dignity (an organization for gay Catholics). And then to top it off, New Yorkers saw him garbed in his Franciscan habit and marching inconspicuously (or conspicuously) in the first gay-inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade. His very vulnerability, imperfection, fragile humanity and honest humility touched the New York multitudes in their own pain, shame and fragility. Even more importantly, he points out a new kind of saint – one much more meaningful than the holy-card kind, with which most people can’t identify. Fr. Judge points out a new kind of saint which the church should start to recognize and canonize.

Fr. Judge, the saint

But Fr. Judge had another and utterly heart-warming and inspiring side to him. He had a legendary knack of story-telling, and he could burst into old Irish standards at the drop of a hat. He had a great talent for making people feel as though they were the only ones in the room. And he, priest of God, had a bartender's gift for bringing strangers together.

More importantly, Judge had deep compassion for New York City’s needy and forgotten. He knew everyone from the homeless to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani who declared at his funeral that, “This man was a saint.” He had an encyclopedic memory for people’s names, birthdays, and passions. And though he was a true New Yorker, born and raised in the City, he lived on an entirely different plain of priorities than theirs: he was non-acquisitive, unselfish and utterly uncomplaining.

No wonder, then, when Cardinal Edward Egan presided at his funeral on September 15, 2001, in St. Francis of Assisi Church, NYC, the Mass was attended by a sea of 3,000 people. In that immense crowd were city officials, former President Bill Clinton and New York Senator Hillary Clinton with daughter Chelsea. The funeral homily was broadcast worldwide over three TV networks. And when a memorial service was later held in the Anglican chapel of the Good Shepherd Chapel on Ninth Ave, cops, firefighter, lawyers, priests, nuns, homeless people, rock-and-rollers, recovering alcoholics, local politicians and middle age couples from the suburbs came flocking from every direction to celebrate a man, who in New Yorkers’ very darkest hour had resurrected a dead God for them.

Conclusion
One nifty word for Easter: “Alleluia!”

Words fall short (and should fall short) especially on Easter Morning. The words of a homily which pretend `to prove’ that Jesus truly rose from the dead are never brilliantly successful. More successful in engendering Easter faith is the yearly robin rolling away the stone before the tomb of winter, building her nest according to an eternal blueprint, and announcing the resurrection of spring.

More successful in engendering Easter faith is a vibrant parish rolling away the stone before the tomb of a dead God, and making Him come alive with living Liturgy and living Word. More successful in engendering Easter faith is a sinful saint like Mychal Judge rolling away the huge stone before the tomb of a murdered God, and assuring New Yorkers that God is, indeed, alive.

Words fall short (and should fall short) especially on Easter Morning. At the end of the day, there is only one nifty word for Easter: “Alleluia!” Alleluia is an unintelligible exclamation; it’s a kind of ecstatic babble which wells up in our hearts because of nesting robins, vibrant parishes and saintly sinners like Mychal Judge.