Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter

Readings of the Day

So often the Bible focuses on shepherds and their care for their flocks, as in today’s readings.  However, years ago I heard a wonderful homily focusing on the flocks, not the shepherds.

It seems that shepherds went about their day tending their individual flocks throughout the fields.  At night, several flocks would be gathered into one pen, guarded by one shepherd to provide an opportunity for the other shepherds to sleep. In the morning, each shepherd would go to the pen’s gate, call his flock, and his flock would follow him out to the fields.  The key to this system was that each individual animal recognized the voice of a particular shepherd: an ingenious way to separate the flocks at the start of each day. However, imagine the racket every morning with a pen full of bleating sheep, competing with several shepherds, all trying to make their voices heard over the din.

I suspect that the shepherd system worked because each sheep stayed with one shepherd throughout the daylight hours in the quiet of the fields, where the shepherd’s voice could be heard clearly. Sheep were only able to recognize their shepherd’s voice each morning because they heard it in the quiet all day, away from the hubbub of the morning routine.

This age of social media and information overload in all aspects of life provide a steady stream of competing voices for attention, very much like all the shepherds at the gate each morning clamoring for the sheep’s attention.  Particularly during this unusual pandemic year, we are utilizing these sources of “noise” more than ever. How can I train myself to hear God’s voice amid all this noise? For example, I sometimes would like a clearer answer from God when praying for discernment. Would I recognize God’s voice more readily if I spent some, or maybe half, of my regular “noise” time in silence?

Lent gives us a reason each year to step away from the noise and listen to God in the silence.  Here are two ways: How about a “quiet” 2021 Lent planning small time blocks each day to spend silently with eyes closed sitting with God?  Or how would it work to turn off all the background noise and be tuned into God as we go through our day, like the sheep in the quiet fields with their shepherd? What would Easter look like then?

Therese Gustaitis is retired from Catholic Charities of West Tennessee.  During the decade that she served there, she was a member of the Catholic Charities USA Leadership Team for Parish Social Ministry for six years. Prior to this role she worked in social ministry in a local Catholic church after a career in health care administration. She enjoys her job description during this season of life: volunteer, mother to two adult children, grandmother “Mimi” and widow. Currently she resides in Memphis.

Sign up to receive the Daily Lent Reflection emails and other CCUSA messages here.