The other day, I saw an amazing video on YouTube. The video was an illustration of the connection sheep have with their shepherd. The video shows a field of grazing sheep, and a group of tourists. One by one, the tourists walk to the edge of the field and call to the sheep. First one, then another, then a third and a fourth, walk to the fence: “Tik-tik-tik-tik.” Every one of them. And after every one of them, nothing happens. The sheep stand there, grazing, not responding at all. Then, the shepherd approaches. “Tik-tik-tik-tik.” The shepherd calls to his sheep. All of a sudden, one sheep, then the other, and then more and more, all of the sheep raise their heads, turn to the shepherd, and run to meet him at the fence on the edge of the field. It was amazing! By the sound of his voice, the shepherd knew the shepherd, and came to him.
Before the Gospel today, we heard this verse from John’s Gospel: “My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and the follow me.” This verse has never made as much sense to me as it did when I watched that video. When we know the voice of our shepherd so intimately that we can tell it’s him without any question or doubt and respond to him alone; that is when we are true disciples of the Lord.
Today, in the Gospel, we see something a little bit different. Rather than sheep who know their shepherd, we see sheep without a shepherd. Jesus is moved with pity for the crowds, who are lost and wandering, looking for someone to follow, something to grasp on to, somewhere to find meaning. I think this, rather than the sheep who know the shepherd, is more like most of our experience in today’s world, and even perhaps in this church today.
We wander around, looking for meaning in our lives, and we hear all kinds of voices giving us their plugs for the answer. We have advertisers telling us that if only we had “better ingredients, better pizza,” we would be happy, or asking us “what’s in your wallet?”, as if answering this question the right way would give us some sort of higher status in the world. We go from product to product, sport to sport, hobby to hobby, all the while looking for something that will fulfill us, and always we come up short, we always want something more, we are never satisfied. The only thing that will truly bring us fulfillment is hearing and following the voice of our true Shepherd, Jesus.
So, our question then becomes, how do we hear this voice? How do I distinguish between the voice of my shepherd, and the voice of all these false shepherds competing for my attention in the world today? Today’s Gospel reading gives us two hints, two pieces of practical advice for blocking out the voices of false shepherds and coming to know him intimately to the point where we know without a doubt when he is speaking to us.
First: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” In order to better hear the voice of our shepherd, we first need to cut out all of the other voices. We spend so much time bombarded by voices, whether on the radio, TV, at work, at school, pretty much everywhere we go, and we know from the story of Elijah the prophet that the Lord’s voice is not in powerful winds or earthquakes, but in the still small whisper. If we constantly have these voices in our heads, they drown out the still small whisper of the Lord’s voice. Now, I’m not saying that we need to completely stop watching TV, or listening to the radio, but perhaps even taking twenty to thirty minutes every day to have quiet and spend some time listening for the Lord’s voice would help us to hear him.
The second thing we can do comes from the last line of the Gospel: “And he began to teach them many things.” Jesus spends time with his sheep, speaking with his voice, so that they come to know him and his voice. In the same way, we must come to know the voice of the Lord in order to be sheep that know him and follow him. The best way to come to know the voice of the Lord is to read the Scriptures. St. Jerome, a great scholar of Scripture from the 4th Century, says that “Ignorance of Scripture is Ignorance of Christ.” If we want to know Jesus and his voice, we must spend time reading the Scriptures and allowing the Lord to speak to us through them.
If we do these two things: spend time in quiet, and read the Scriptures, we can come to know the voice of the shepherd, and we will be more able to respond without any hesitation whenever he calls. As we approach the Lord today in the Eucharist, let us ask for the grace to be sheep who know the shepherd, and to follow his voice without hesitation among all of the other voices in the world.
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