The Lost Sheep and Our Shepherd: After the Election

It is that feeling that sucks all the air out of your chest:  your heart falls and you begin to panic as no one around you looks familiar.  You can’t find your mother.  Your father is gone.  Your siblings are nowhere in sight.  You are once again a child at the mall, and you find yourself lost in a large crowd of people.  The fear sets in.  The tears begin to fall.  You wonder how you ever got to this point. Then a familiar hand softly touches your shoulder.  With tear filled eyes you turn around.  Your mom is standing there with her arms wide open.  You embrace.  You are safe.  You were lost and now you have been found.

 

After this election Tuesday, regardless of who you voted for and regardless of who won, I think we as Catholic Christians in this country have reason to feel much like lost sheep.  Over and over and over again we find ourselves lost.   Lost in a desert of compromise on matters of our faith with which we should not and one should even say with which we cannot compromise.  For on the same ticket we saw two Catholic vice-presidential candidates with almost completely different viewpoints.  We saw that as a voting bloc—which could be one of the largest in the country if we were able to unite—Catholics were equally divided between both parties in this election.  And we see even more, that Catholics have long since dominated the majority of the Supreme Court.  And yet those Justices are oftentimes equally split on decisions and fail to uphold Catholic values and principles.  Within this desert of compromise we perceive a lack of clarity in the values of the church.  We come to understand the Truth of our faith to be determined by a democratic process.  We vote for it and therefore that makes it right.  We think it’s ok to believe what we want to believe and reject what we want to reject about our faith. Or perhaps even worse, we are unable to articulate the difference.   And this compromise and lack of clarity leaves us feeling separated from the fold—from each other.  It leaves us feeling alone and isolated.  We treasure our individualism and freedom for whatever seems to set us free, and yet who can ignore those bubbling feelings of isolation, separation and despair that exist inside of us.

 

Yet the shepherd is coming.  He comes with his rod and his staff to pick us up, to place us on his back and to bring us to the fold.  He desires to free us from the abyss of secularity, free us from the desert of compromise, free us from the false freedoms of choice, free us from the relativism that leaves our souls wandering.  He wants to bring us to the heart of the fold, to the center of the Church, if we would only let him.  He cares for us.  He loves us.  He would not leave us alone.  Yet when his gentle hands come to place us on his shoulders, it can only be on his terms, not ours.  For it is not about us.  It never was about us.  It is about him.  For all other things in life, are as Saint Paul says, a loss, compared to the supreme good of Christ Jesus our Lord.  The Good Shepherd stands waiting to bring us back—will we as Catholics in this country allow him to do so?