The Gospel Path

My topic today is the Gospel Path. Jesus is the shepherd who shows us the Gospel Path. Since our image for today is the shepherd, I wish to take a close look at the work of shepherds in the first century.

In the time of Christ, they did not have fences, and the sheep were not kept in barns because they moved to a new pasture every day. Each day began with the shepherd moving his flock in hopes of finding greener pastures. The sheep listened to his voice and followed him. The shepherd showed them the path that they should follow.

The shepherd was always looking for pastures that did not contain weeds and poisonous plants. The sheep would hurt themselves by sticking their noses into thistles and brambles, and they needed a shepherd to guide them toward the good stuff. The shepherd was also leading the flock to pools of still water. That was necessary because the sheep would not drink from a stream of running water. The movement of the water would scare them. They would drink only from pools of still water.

The job description of the shepherd was described very accurately in today’s Responsorial Psalm: the 23rd Psalm. Each day the shepherd would give his flock a good path to follow. Psalm 23, verse 3 says, “The shepherd guides us along right paths.”

When Jesus was teaching and healing, he was functioning as a Good Shepherd, and he gave us a path to follow. I like to call this path the Gospel Path. In other words, Jesus is the shepherd, and we are his flock, and our goal is to follow his leadership.

The first stop on the Gospel Path is daily prayer. We must build our spiritual muscles and provide spiritual nourishment for our souls. That’s what Jesus did by going off by himself for prayer each day. He did so without calling attention to himself. In fact, there were days when his disciples could not find him because he was in the desert or in a garden or on a mountaintop. He was talking to his heavenly Father and listening to him, and that daily dialogue revealed the Gospel Path to him.

He presented the Gospel Path to a large audience in the Sermon on the Mount. His message was not all sweetness and light. He was asking his people to love their enemies and pray for those who were hurting them. He spoke against repaying evil with evil. He wanted his people to overcome evil with good. He challenged his people to embrace suffering with tenderness.

That was a major part of his public ministry. He made a deliberate effort to touch people who were suffering. By touch, I mean that he was actually touching them. I will give several examples. When they brought forward a man who was blind, Jesus touched his eyes and placed his hand on his head, and he was cured. When they brought forward a leper, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him, and he was healed. When Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a terrible fever, Jesus touched her hand, and the fever went away.

His ministry with his hands helps us to remember that Jesus was always in touch with his people. His ministry of touching those who were hurting reminds us to touch suffering with hope, because that is part of the Gospel Path.

And now for the really hard part. The Gospel Path means suffering when we tell the truth. That was true for Jesus, and it will be true for us. Jesus told the Gospel truth in his public ministry. He said, “I see the sacredness and dignity of every person. I see the goodness of God in the Pharisees and the lepers. I see God living in the scribes and the tax collectors, in the rich and in the poor, in those who are sick and in those who are healthy.”

Some people in his audience did not like his message. They thought that God is living in some people but not others. They said, “Let’s throw him over the cliff,” but he slipped away from them. On another day, they picked up stones to throw at him. Jesus suffered many times of rejection because he proclaimed the truth. Every person is a good person because every person is a child of God.

When he was in Jerusalem, after the Last Supper, he suffered the Agony in the Garden. He could see that preaching the truth would lead to suffering and dying on the cross. Scripture says that his anguish was so great that his sweat became drops of blood that fell onto the ground. But then Jesus remembered his commitment to his heavenly Father, and he prayed, “Father, let thy will, not mine, be done.” That is the key to the story of salvation. Jesus decided to follow through on doing God’s will, and they crucified him.

He followed the Gospel Path, and all people of all time were set free from the power of sin, and the gates of heaven were opened once again. But that is not the end of the story, because Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” The cross is part of the Gospel Path. We must tell the truth as Jesus did. We must tell people that God loves everyone. Pope Leo told that truth to the world last week, and now he is being criticized for it. Suffering for the truth is part of the Gospel Path.

I will close with a short summary. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and he is showing us the Gospel Path. That means that we are praying daily, touching suffering with hope, and telling the truth about God’s love.