Why the Good Shepherd told the wolves they had no power over him
He warned them that their apparent victory would be nothing of the kind.
He warned them that their apparent victory would be nothing of the kind.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ, the Good Shepherd, lays down His life freely, with divine power and perfect obedience to the Father.
That His death is not only salvific but the highest act of love, humility, and submission.
Why the Father loves Him—because He gives everything for us, even unto death and the feeding of souls with Himself.
He shows us that no sacrifice, no love, no obedience can compare to that of the Good Shepherd.
The Good Shepherd
The Preaching of the Cross, Part I, Chapter XV
St. John x. 1–21.
Story of the Gospels, § 96
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Why does Christ call the Chief Priests 'thieves and robbers'?
Why Christ is 'the door' through which every good shepherd must come
Why the Good Shepherd told the wolves they had no power over him
Effect of 'The Good Shepherd' on the different classes of the Jews
He gives his life
The third mark by which our Lord here proves Himself to be the Good Shepherd, is that He lays down His life for the sheep. He seems to have before His mind the passage of Isaias,
‘If he shall lay down His life for sin, He shall see a long-lived seed.’1
As has been said, it is not unprecedented, for shepherds, in such countries as that in which our Lord spoke—for Judaea, as distinguished from Galilee, was a pastoral country as compared with an agricultural country—to be called on to expose their lives for the safety of the flock committed to their charge.
But in no case of the kind could any shepherd make a sacrifice of his life which could be compared to that of the Good Shepherd for the redemption of the world. For no such death can ever redeem souls, nor can it even be efficacious in securing the deliverance of the flock from temporal dangers.
But our Lord’s Sacrifice saves from eternal death, the true death of the soul. It is also a complete sacrifice of a life which would not have been liable to death but for our sakes, that it might be laid down for the sheep. Whereas any other life that is given for any other cause, however good and great, and with whatever generosity, is only a life cut short before its time. The sacrifice of such a life for another may benefit ourselves, but the sacrifice of the life of our Lord was altogether beneficial to us and not to Himself.
His other sheep brought home
The fourth mark follows, namely, that our Lord has other sheep who are not of that fold, that is, of the Jewish nation. All men were His sheep originally, for before the time of Abraham there was no separation, no peculiar nation chosen by God as His own. Thus nothing can destroy the right by which the whole race of mankind belongs to our Lord as their Creator and as their promised Redeemer, by the promise made immediately after the Fall to the progenitors of all mankind.
The Gentiles and the whole race of man from the beginning of time to the end of the world, are thus the sheep of the Good Shepherd. But in that day they were sheep which lay at a distance from Him, and from the small and cherished fold which contained the children of the chosen people. Our Lord now says that it is a part of His work as the Good Shepherd to fetch home these outlying sheep, and make them one with the others, that there may be one fold and one Shepherd.
‘Them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd.’
He was not to do this in His own person, but in the persons of His Apostles and preachers. But they have all their power and all their grace from Him, it is His voice which men hear, it is His grace which moves the souls of the hearers as well as guides the tongues of the preachers.
The fold is His, and it is One because it is His, and is ruled by the one shepherd, the Supreme Pontiff, through whom our Lord governs them on earth, as He has used the voices of the Apostles and other Apostolic men in place of His own, to bring home to the one Fold the wandering sheep.
Apparent difficulty
The words which follow may be considered as explaining an apparent difficulty which might be founded on what He has said, namely, that He was to lay down His Life for the sheep. How was this consistent with the following sentence, in which He had said, that He had other sheep, and He must bring them, and that there should be one fold and one Shepherd?
Perhaps our Lord rather took occasion from this difficulty to speak of His Death as voluntary, and as to be followed by His Resurrection. For it was well that these truths, which the Jews could not then understand, as even the Apostles did not understand them, should be frequently spoken of, even though the language would not be yet intelligible. His words would rise up in the minds of the Apostles and their disciples, after they had been fulfilled. And the fact that He had hinted at so much which He had not explained, might lead them on to loving contemplation of many other truths belonging to this rich outpouring of His love as the Good Shepherd.
Such would be all the wonderful arrangements in His Kingdom for the nurturing and guarding His sheep by the sacraments and means of grace, and especially that excess of love of which no other shepherd could be capable, of not only giving His life for His sheep, but of feeding them upon Himself after He had died for them.
But what made Christ’s death the highest act of obedience? And what did the Jews make of his words?
The Father Coleridge Reader is a labour of love. But curating, cleaning up and publishing these texts takes a lot of time.
In order to keep it going, we have to make some of the posts in a series exclusively for members.
If you value what we are doing, please consider joining us with a subscription!