Hey father Rick here in Ave Maria University!
In 2005 something strange happened in Turkey, a shepherd took his vast flock of sheep up a mountainside dangerously close to a cliffs edge and he left them there, he abandoned them there, and one of the little sheep made his way to the edge started to explore and fell off the cliff to his death, and what happened after that was one sheep after the next followed the first one to the edge of the cliff over the side and to his death, as it is portrayed by Travis in the video behind me. Sad one after the next just following blindly the guy in front of him, until four hundred of them fell to their death off the side of the cliff that day, but the story gets even crazier, because four hundred of them died, but another fifteen hundred followed after those four hundred, one by one off the edge of the cliff, but those 1500 didn’t die because they landed on a nice soft fluffy layer of sheep carcass and just walked away.
So, it’s a strange tale and it raises the question, why does Jesus call us his sheep? Are we dumb? Are we that dumb? or is he trying to teach us some kind of lesson? He calls himself the Good Shepherd, and he refers to us as sheep, because of something else, I think sheep have an uncanny quality, the Shepherds will say, of locking in on the voice of the shepherd, once they get it, once it’s in their brain, they will follow the voice of the shepherd wherever he leads and that’s why Jesus calls us sheep, he encourages us to hear his voice to learn what his voice is like through the Scriptures, through the sacraments, through our silent prayer, until we are locked in and ready to follow that voice, wherever it leads, and you know this story could be looked at as a story of dumb sheep, or really a story of a neglectful shepherd, that’s the real tale, that’s going on here, a shepherd who abandoned his sheep and left them too close to danger; our Shepherd never does that, once we are locked in on his voice, we find that he is with us at all times, always calling us and will always lead us out of danger and trouble if we just listen to him and follow, as his voice leads us to the kingdom.
May God give you peace.
The Shepherd’s voice leads us out of danger
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