Good Shepherd – Catholic Teen

Today is the optional memorial of St. John the first, pope and martyr. He was the Pope from about 523 until his death in 526. During his papacy, Emperor Justin was forcing the Arians of Constantinople to convert to Catholicism and to hand over their churches. The Arian King of Italy, Theodoric, asked the Pope to order the Emperor to stop the harsh punishment of the Arians. Justin decided to give the churches back to the Arians, but he would not let the forced converts go back to their old ways. When Pope John came back, Theodoric was enraged, and imprisoned the Pope for his failure. Due to his long journey and maltreatment in prison, the Pope died shortly after being placed in his cell. He was immediately honored as a martyr by the Church, and his body was taken to be buried in Rome.

Anyway, there are two sets of readings to honor this saint. The first is the standard readings for the 7th Week of Easter, and the other comes from the proper of the saints. The first reading for the latter option comes from Revelation 3:14, 20-22 :

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. ²¹He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. ²²He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Most of us are probably familiar with this scene. Jesus is wanting you to let him into your heart etc. There is a famous painting made from this passage by William Holman Hunt called “The Light of the World”. Take a few moments to study this carefully.

It’s called the Light of the World probably because the only source of light you can see is from Jesus and his lamp. The rest of his surrounding look nasty and dangerous. The kind of stuff scary stories take place in. “It was a dark and stormy night when Jesus came for a visit”. There are thorn bushes and weird trees. The sky is a sickly green. Even the cottage has vines of all of it. Speaking of the house, have you noticed anything a little strange about it? Maybe on the door perhaps? If you guessed that there’s no door knob, you’d be correct. At least, there’s no knob on the outside. You have to be the one to let Jesus in. Now on to the lantern. To me, it looks a lot like the dome of a Church. It even appears to have little stained-glass windows on it. I wonder what that might mean? Maybe that without the church, it would be next to impossible to even see Jesus coming, much less let him in. You might not even know that He existed.

Jesus appears to be wearing some pretty fancy clothes. I mean, he has a crown on, one of those cool silk robes. He even has a cape! I don’t think a farmer would put on those kinds of clothes to go visit someone in the bad part of the woods. He’s the prince who has come to bring you back to the kingdom. He’s come to save you. All you have to do is open the door.

The psalm for today is the every famous psalm 23: The Good Shepherd. One of the things I always notice is “He makes me lie down in green pastures”. Usually a shepherd will guide his flock to a nice shady place with lots of grass where they can eat and rest. One of the things I think is “But I don’t want to lie down”. I don’t like laying down in grass. My body gets really itchy and my clothes get stained. Sometimes I like sitting down in the grass though. It can be nice at times. When you have a glass of lemonade and the breeze is blowing in your face. Again, sometimes it annoys the living daylights out of me. I think this applies to my life, especially in certain areas like prayer or going to church. Sometimes I enjoy Mass. Father’s homily might be short and sweet, but have a special meaning for me. As a long-time altar server, the Mass might go perfectly without any mess-ups. At other times, Mass might not be that fun. Father might have taken about an hour on his homily and not be even that meaningful. All the other altar servers might be the kind of kids who kick the bells, or hit the priest in the face when they try to bless him with the incensor. I might have had a really bad day, or all 6 of my little siblings might have screamed the entire ride there. As far as prayer goes,

I make myself do my prayers, but I seldom actually pray, if you know what I mean. Anyway, getting back to the analogy, sometimes I don’t want to lay in green pastures. It’s good for me and I need the nourishment, but sometimes it’s boring or stressful. But I do it because I know I need to. I mean, I don’t think grass tastes that good, even to sheep it can’t compare to a steak. But Jesus wants me to, and that’s goo enough for me. The rest of the psalm is really nice too. “And Goodness and Mercy shall follow me, all the days of my life”. Inspiring Stuff.