Before the resurrection, Peter denies Christ three times and hides; after the resurrection, Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit and speaks with great courage. In Acts, chapter 4, he faces the Sanhedrin, the assembly of rulers, elders and scribes and proclaims the risen Christ, completely indifferent to the sufferings that will follow. What Peter said to the rulers was direct and he offended them, but his bold proclamation before his arrest led to the conversion of thousands. That is the true face of the Church. In the gospel of John, Jesus says:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away - and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.
Not every shepherd in the history of the Church was willing to put his life on the line for the good of the sheep; we need not be scandalized by this. I am reminded of the Office of Readings, specifically the readings from the 24th and 25th week in Ordinary time, which typically occurs in the fall. Every day for two weeks straight, the second reading is taken from St. Augustine's Sermon 46, entitled On Pastors. Whenever I read this, I always think to myself that it must be a very difficult two weeks for some bishops, because every day Augustine goes after those shepherds who are primarily out for themselves, who are indifferent to the poor and the suffering and who tailor their preaching so as not to upset the wealthy - and in this way fail in their prophetic mission.
On the Friday of that week, he says:
But what sort of shepherds are they who for fear of giving offense not only fail to prepare the sheep for the temptations that threaten, but even promise them worldly happiness? God himself made no such promise to this world. On the contrary, God foretold hardship upon hardship in this world until the end of time. And you want the Christian to be exempt from these troubles? Precisely because he is a Christian, he is destined to suffer more in this world. ... You, Shepherd, seek what is yours and not what is Christ's, you disregard what the Apostle says...You say instead: "If you live a holy life in Christ, all good things will be yours in abundance.
That sounds so much like the gospel of prosperity, which a number of Evangelicals preach today. Instead of serving the poor and the sick, they demand 10% of their income and insist that if they would only accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, their lives would prosper financially. It would seem that something similar was happening in the fourth century.
But this goes on for thirteen days straight in the Office of Readings. It is unrelenting. An example of a good shepherd who does not run from the wolves because he loves the sheep more than he loves himself is Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was canonized a saint in 2018 by Pope Francis. His preaching and visible solidarity with the poor was rather distressing to many of his brother bishops in El Salvador, who were playing it safe for the sake of avoiding any kind of blow back from the wealthy oligarchy. Romero said: It is very easy to serve the word without making the world uncomfortable. A word that is very spiritual, a word with no commitment to history, a word that can be heard in any part of the world because it doesn't belong anywhere; this kind of word doesn't cause problems, doesn't give rise to conflicts.
Romero also said:
Charity is above all love of neighbor. And, even though one is a bishop or a priest or has been baptized, if that person doesn't follow the example of the Good Samaritan, if, like the bad priests of the old law, he goes a roundabout way so as to not encounter the wounded body, not touch such things, "be prudent, let's not offend anybody, more gently," then, brothers and sisters, we are not carrying out what God commanded: we are going a round-about way. ...The Christian commitment is very serious. And, above all, our commitment as priests and bishops obliges us to go out and meet the poor wounded person on the road.
And finally, he says:
Let us pray, but not with the kind of prayer that alienates us, not with a kind of prayer that makes us avoid reality. We should never go to church as a flight from our duties on earth. Let's go to church to get strength and clarity to return to better carry out our tasks at home, our political duties, our tasks in the organization. This is a healthy orientation to these things of earth. These are the true liberators.
The result of Romero's fidelity to his office was that he was shot while saying mass on March 24th, 1980. It is easy to see why Pope Francis loved Romero and had him canonized - and we could quote from Pope Francis well into the next hour also, challenging his brother bishops to a greater openness and orientation to the world outside, recognizing Christ in the suffering, the poor and the oppressed.
Another interesting line in the same chapter of the gospel quoted above is the following: "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ..." The people, the faithful, know the voice of the good shepherd, the voice of Christ. They know intuitively that Catholicism is about Christ, it's not about us, it's not about the clergy. It's all about Christ who identifies with the sick, the suffering, the poor and those who struggle. I've been very impressed by a number of people in my own parish over the years, for although their children have stopped coming to Mass for various reasons - as a result of being personally scandalized by the reports of clerical sex abuse, which got a lot of media coverage in the 80s and 90s, or the role of the Church in the residential schools, or because of a bad experience with a priest, etc., - , these parishioners stayed the course, always coming to Mass to hear the word of God in the readings and receive Christ in the Eucharist, because one some level they were able to distinguish between the voice of the good shepherd and the voice of the hired hand. So many people mistakenly believe that Catholicism is about the Church. Catholicism is not about us-we're all just sinners, baptized and redeemed, forgiven and always struggling. It is about Christ, the second Person of the Trinity who drew close to us by joining a human nature to himself, who suffered and died so that we might find him in the midst of our own suffering and death, and in the sufferings and poverty of others.