Homily of H.E. Most Rev. Charles John Brown D.D., Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines
July 21, 2024 | Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Our Lady of the Assumption Parish, Malate, Manila
Address and Greetings
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, here at Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Malate:
As your Apostolic Nuncio, it gives me so much joy and happiness to be with you this morning. In this kind of a preview of your Parish Fiesta, which will be on the 15th of August. The moment in which your beloved and newly arrived Parish Administrator, Father Hans Magdurulang will become the parish priest after being installed by the cardinal on August 15. It gives me a lot of joy, as I said, as your Papal Nuncio to be with you this morning.
Gospel Reflection
In the Gospel (Mk 6:30-34), we hear how Jesus looked at the vast crowd—all of these people, and His heart was moved to pity, to mercy for them. Because the Gospel tells us, “They were like sheep without a shepherd.” Then the Gospel tells us, “He began to teach them many things.”
So, the first thing we see in the Gospel this morning about our Lord and Savior Jesus: how much He loves us, how much He cares for us, how His heart is move, His heart is stirred when He sees people who are lost, confused, disoriented, and wandering around not knowing where to go. Our Lord has mercy on them. Our Lord loves them. Our Lord comes for them. Our Lord searches for them. It's the Parable of the Shepherd with 100 sheep, who loses one, and then goes out to try to find that one lost sheep, to bring that poor wandering sheep back to the fold (Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:4-7). The Lord is the One who has come from heaven into this world to find us, is filled with love and compassion for us. He sees us and looks at us with mercy.
So first, we see this image of the human race, of humanity as like sheep without a shepherd. What does that mean? When sheep don't have a shepherd, they wander around, and they don't know where they're going. They're confused, as I said. They're disoriented. They don't know what to do. When we look at the human condition, all of us as human beings, our tragedy, our difficulty is that on our own, left to ourselves. If we don't get any help, we don't know where to find true happiness, and where to find true fulfillment. All of us. Every single human being on the earth has a desire for happiness, for fulfillment; but unless we're shown where to find that fulfillment, where to find that happiness, we wander around, looking for happiness in all the wrong places.
There was a country music song many years ago in America, “Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places”. That's really what human beings do. If they don't have the Lord, if they don't have Jesus. They're looking for love, they're looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places.
That's the tragedy of our human situation. Why do people act in self-destructive ways? It’s a mystery? Why do people in 2024 take drugs? Everyone has known for 50 years that drugs will destroy you. We’re repeating it year after year after year. Again, here we are, 2024 people are still doing it. Why? What is that about? It means that we are sheep without a shepherd. We're lost. Confused. People are easily led astray. Easily disoriented.
We need the Lord to show us the way. Because Jesus is, as He says in the Gospel, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn. 14:6). If we follow Him, we find the truth. If we follow Him, we find life, we find fulfillment, we find happiness. If we try to find happiness, apart from the Lord, just by fulfilling our own desires, what we want, we will be deceived by the evil one, by the devil; and we'll find ourselves tricked and deceived in misery and sadness. So, the Lord is this Good Shepherd who comes to us, to look for us. The Lord is the One who shows us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Lord comes to us in mercy.
Pope Francis, as all of us know, reflects often on the Lord's mercy. He says, that mercy from the Lord, and I read in a quotation from our beloved Pope Francis, “Mercy renews and redeems because mercy is the meeting of two hearts: the heart of God who comes to meet the human heart. The latter [the human heart] is warmed and healed by the heart of God. Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh,” as a prophet, Ezekiel says, (cf. Ezek 36:26). Our hearts of stone become “capable of love despite our sinfulness,” we come to realize that we are a ‘new creation’ (Gal 6:15): that we are loved, and therefore we exist. The Pope says, “I am forgiven, therefore I am reborn; I have been shown mercy, therefore I have become a vessel of mercy” (Reference: Misericordia et Misera #16).
This reorientation that the Lord does in our lives doesn't only happen at a moment. All of us have friends, perhaps they're Born Again, Christians. They had a born-again experience. That's certainly a good thing; but we are born again in baptism. Our reorientation, our direction to the Father, our direction by Jesus is a process that we need to engage in every day.
Jesus is the Shepherd who leads us. That word “shepherd” is very interesting in English. He says in the Gospel today, “they were like sheep without a shepherd”. In English, the word “shepherd”, (Who is the shepherd? He's the one who leads the sheep. Right?), the word “shepherd” comes from “sheep”. It really is “sheep herder”. The one who herds the sheep is the “SHEeP-HERD”, the sheep-shepherd. In Latin, the word is different. Maybe we don't know the Latin word for shepherd, but I will tell you. It's “pastor”. Pastor. That's why we call ministers of the Gospel: pastor. Jesus, in Latin is the “Pastor Bonus”, the Good Pastor (Ego sum Pastor Bonus = I am the good shepherd). What does that word “pastor” come from? It doesn't come from the sheep in Latin. It comes from the verb “pascor” (“pastor” from “pastus”, past participle of pascere, pascor), which means “to feed”. So, the word for Shepherd, and Latin “pastor”, he's the one who feeds. Actually, that word pastor in Latin has the same root from when we get words like “pasta”, which all of us like to eat, like spaghetti, cannelloni. Pasta comes to the same word as pastor. This pasta is something that feeds us when we eat it. Right?
The Two Tables of the Holy Mass
Jesus is the Pastor, “the one who feeds”. That's what “shepherd” means in Latin: to feed, to nourish, to give us food. How does the Lord do that? How does He feed us? We heard it actually in the introduction to Mass this morning. The Lord feeds us from two tables.
The table that I'm standing on here, the table of His Word (ambo), His Divine Word in Holy Scripture; but then also, all of the revelation of the Church, the Word of God, the teaching of the Church, all the instruction, all the catechesis of the Church. I see above me, I believe, is San Pedro Calungsod with his book Doctrina Christiana. That's the teaching of the Church. That's the Word of God, explained. That's the table of the Word that feeds us. Without that teaching, without that word, we become malnourished in our spiritual lives. We need to feed on the Word of God: reading the Bible, studying Christian doctrine, knowing our faith, feeding from this table—the Table of the Word (ambo).
This is not the only table in the Church here of Our Lady with the Assumption. There's the other table here: the Table of the Eucharist, the Table of the Body, the Table the Sacrament, the Table of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. Those two things go together for us as Catholics. We don't have one without the other. We have the Word [of God], Christian doctrine, feeding our minds, showing us how to orient ourselves, telling us how to go forward. Then we have the Body of Jesus in the Eucharist which we can receive this morning, which comes into us, strengthens us, and gives us the power, gives us the ability to put into practice the Word that we have received. Because without His grace, coming into us by the Sacraments, we can hear the Word of God, but it's very hard to do it. With the Body of Christ, the Eucharist, we become strong, we are nourished. We are fed by the Pastor Bonus, the Good Feeder, the Good Shepherd. We are fed with His Body and His Blood. We can follow Him in this world. We are no longer lost sheep wandering around, bumping into things, falling down, falling off cliffs, getting lost, getting dirty. No, we're happy sheep following the Shepherd.
“I am the Good Shepherd.” “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose…” We prayed that today in the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 23:1-3, 3-4, 5, 6); and it comes true every time we celebrate Holy Mass, at the Table of the Word, the Table of the Eucharist.
Call to Grow from Sheep to Fellow Shepherds
How glorious it is for us to have the gift of Catholic faith. What a precious gift; but it's not only a gift that we need to keep in ourselves. Because there are many sheep wandering around, lost, outside your parish, wandering in the streets of Manila, not knowing their left hand from the right hand. We need to gather them in. We need to point them in the direction of Jesus. We need to be like what Mary does, Our Lady at the Wedding Feast of Cana (John 2:1-11). When Mary says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn. 2:5), speaking of Jesus. We need to draw people to the Church, because the Church is our life. The Church is the place where we find the Good Shepherd, the One who feeds us.
Conclusion
So, in about three weeks, you will celebrate the installation of your new parish priests, Father Hans. It gives me so much joy to be with you. Unfortunately, I will be out of the country on August 15; but I'll be praying for you, all of you on your parish fiesta.
I ask you to pray for me, your Papal Nuncio, but also please pray for Pope Francis. He always asks me, whenever I see him in Rome, He always asks me, “Please, tell the Filipino people, my beloved Filipino people to pray for me.” He's relying on your prayers. Please pray for Pope Francis.
God bless you; and in three weeks time, have a wonderful parish fiesta!
Transcribed by Joel V. Ocampo
Photos from Our Lady of the Assumption Parish Malate Facebook page
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