Weaning season

I spend a lot of time in the countryside near Hermann. I’m drawn there by the wildness of the Missouri River valley, which is as beautiful as anywhere in the world with gently rolling glacial till that collects in the valleys with their thin, seasonal streams. The streams drop down through the bluffs, weaving through ancient rock before trickling into the oxbows of the Missouri River. And, of course, I go there for the wine.

The property where I stay is surrounded by small, family cattle farms. In the springtime, right around now, the winter-born calves are separated from their mothers by the farmers (or we might refer to them as shepherds). Weaning the calves is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The calves cry out for their mothers. All day long, their bawling echoes through the valleys. At dusk, the farm dogs emerge to add their barking to the fray as they herd the cows into separate barns without their calves. It’s a haunting sound. It’s a sound that, if you were to hear it, would cause you to hug your child just a little more tightly.

Even though I consider the Missouri River valley something of a paradise, the fall of Adam is present even here. Even here, original sin has affected nature and causes hardship, exemplified by this separation of mother from child. It always brings home to me the question of my role in all this. To what extent have my sins damaged creation, my relationships with other people, and my own self? Are those sounds of anguish specifically meant to fall upon my ears as a chastisment? There’s no easy answer to the question, and perhaps the important thing is that we ask it, that we don’t make peace with sin, that we remain sensitive of the connectivity of man to nature and the way our sins are a departure from our stewardship, an abandonment, I think you could say, including an abandonment of our own selves. Sin is never private, it always affects the whole. Conversely, this means that our love and our happiness is never private, but we have more influence for the good than we know. In giving us stewardship over creation, God has taken a risk. We will love or else experience painful separation.

This is all a long way of trying to define the theological concept of the Good Shepherd. Those calves bawl for days when they’re weaned. They don’t understand why they’ve been separated from their mothers, and that in the midst of a fallen world, at times we must suffer in order to emerge into a greater good. The weaning is for the health of the animals. A Good Shepherd must make difficult choices in order to protect the herd.

When Our Lord proclaims himself the Good Shepherd, he is saying that he will make difficult choices to protect us. This means he vows to tell us the truth, shake us from our mediocre slumbers if need be, equip us for success, and ultimately, lay down his life for our sake.

A shepherd lays down his life for his flock. In other words, the principle of shepherding is not what you can get out of your position of authority but what you can give. This is true for bishops and priests, who are meant to be servant leaders in the Church. Husbands and fathers, this is also for you. You are shepherds of your domestic church. Your vocation means that you must make difficult decisions and take on the responsibility, but again, always doing so because guarding your family is your priority.

Moving the calves away hurts but is necessary. In the spiritual realm, the analogue is simple – it hurts to be removed from our earthly attachments. But this is what a good shepherd does. There’s no virtue in telling you to stay the same. You’re fine people, yes? I like you all very much. But you need to shape up! We need to shape up, and that means the more difficult path. It’s difficult for the shepherd, too, pushing the calves out the door. But it’s for our good, to be pushed out into the fields to learn to love, learn of our own free will to decide to hear his voice and follow our shepherd.

Our Lord is teaching about the Good Shepherd because his audience had ceased making the hard decisions. The church leaders had abandoned the people by no longer teaching the truth. It’s obvious that the vocation is a difficult one and a man doesn’t accomplish this on his own, this participation in the vocation of the Good Shepherd. I’m not up here to unrealistically and presumptuously tell you to just try harder and do better. Man up, or some nonsense like that. I’m advising you to give your life to Christ and allow him to work through you. Allow the Good Shepherd to empower you in your vocation. This is the only way, otherwise the responsibility is beyond our abilities. As Rainer Maria Rilke prays, “Let my courage be like a rock, let the daily task of the shepherd seem possible to me, as he moves about and, throwing a stone to measure it, fixes the hem of his flock where it has grown ragged.”

The other task of a shepherd is feeding the flock, as Christ famously asks of St. Peter – feed my sheep. Our Lord’s teaching is our food. The Blessed Sacrament is our food. In addition to giving the mothers time to rest and grow stronger before the next birthing season, the weaning permanently moves the calves to adult food. This is how they grow strong. Our Lord never holds this food back, but he gives us the fullness of truth and invites us to his sacramental feast. Neither ought we, as priests, or fathers, hold this back. Priests must speak the hard truths. So must fathers. Priests must spend time in the confessional so as to assist the faithful in preparing for a worthy reception of the Eucharist. Fathers have their role in bringing their family to confession and making it a priority for your children. Fathers are the spiritual head of the household, so it is your responsibility to get your family to Mass.

I want to deepen our theology of the Good Shepherd by pushing it into a paradox. All theology is ultimately paradoxical because it alerts us to the fact that most of the ideas prevalent in the world today are nonsense, and the truth is stranger and more mysterious than we ever dreamed, that this is not the best of all possible worlds but is actually the best of all impossible worlds. We are in a miracle.

The paradox, here, is that Christ is the Good Shepherd but he is also the Lamb. If he is saying that we lambs must put aside our own desires and follow the will of the Shepherd, this teaching ends up not a denial of ourselves but a fulfillment, because in becoming lambs we become like the shepherd. It’s the giving up of a lesser good for a greater good, and we find that in following Christ we are set free. He doesn’t ask of us anything he is not willing to give. He is a lamb. He submits to the will of his Father. He feels the difficulty of living in the flock.

And now he is before us as both Shepherd King but also Crucified Lamb, the perfect sacrifice who bears our sin, accepting accusation, feeling the pain of the spring weaning. His heart is eternally that of Lamb and Shepherd.

I am the Good Shepherd, says the Lord, and I know my sheep, and mine know me. Alleluia.