The Good Shepherd Does Not Flee

Good Shepherd Sunday for Catholics Living Among Wolves, Hirelings, and the Ruins of the Postconciliar Church

CHRIS JACKSON APR 19 The Earth Is Still Full of the Goodness of the Lord The liturgy for this Sunday begins with a sentence that almost sounds too bright for times like ours: “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord, alleluia.” To many traditional Catholics, that can feel hard to say with a straight face. The sanctuaries have been stripped, the liturgy has been gutted in most places, bishops speak the language of managers and public relations men, Leo continues the conciliar program under a different personality, and the media class that once styled itself as vigilant now grows strangely timid when vigilance is needed most. Everywhere one looks, there is compromise, evasion, theatrical concern, and spiritual cowardice. Yet the Church places this antiphon on our lips anyway. Why? Because Christian hope does not begin with favorable appearances. It begins with God. The earth is not full of the goodness of bishops. It is not full of the goodness of chancery officials, conference statements, Catholic influencers, or controlled opposition in tailored jackets. It is full of the goodness of the Lord. If our peace rests on the visible health of the ecclesiastical landscape, then we will have no peace at all. If it rests on the unchanging goodness of God, then we may be bruised, betrayed, isolated, and yet not conquered. The Introit lifts our eyes above the chaos by reminding us who made the heavens in the first place: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” The same divine Word who created all things is not baffled by the present crisis. He is not improvising, wringing His hands over Rome, over episcopal corruption, over the collapse of discipline, over the fraudulence of official optimism. He knows exactly what He is doing. The world fell through pride. It is raised by the humility of the Son. That is the theme of the Collect, and it cuts against the whole spirit of the age. The conciliar revolution was drenched in pride. Pride in dialogue. Pride in adaptation. Pride in novelty. Pride in man speaking to modern man in a new language. Pride in dismantling inherited forms so that the Church might finally become intelligible to the world. And what has that pride produced? Emptying churches, doctrinal confusion, vulgar liturgy, and a hierarchy increasingly unable even to name its own disease. Meanwhile the prayer of the Mass points us elsewhere. The fallen world was lifted up not by aggiornamento, relevance, or managed ambiguity, but by the humility of Christ. That is where traditional Catholics must live. We must live inside the humility of the Son of God. That is where the Church survives her own eclipse. Christ Suffered for Us, Leaving Us an Example The Epistle from First Peter is one of the most needed passages for our time because it gives suffering a shape. It tells us what Christ did in the middle of injustice. “Who when He was reviled, did not revile: when He suffered, He threatened not, but delivered Himself to him that judged Him unjustly.” This does not mean passivity in the face of error or bowing before men whose office or costume is used as a shield for destruction. The same Christ who suffered silently before His execution also called hypocrites whitewashed sepulchres and drove money changers from the temple. The point is deeper. He did not allow the malice of His enemies to dictate the form of His soul. He remained what He was while they revealed what they were. That is the battle for traditional Catholics right now. The danger is not only that corrupt churchmen and their apologists will wound the faithful. The danger is that the faithful, worn down by years of outrage, will become inwardly deformed by the very ugliness they oppose. One begins by resisting lies and ends by losing peace. St. Peter will not let us go there. “By whose stripes you were healed.” The Church is healed by the wounds of Christ. If we lose sight of that, even our best polemics become spiritually thin. The issue is not merely that modern churchmen are wrong. The issue is that souls need the medicine of Calvary, and the world has been fed slogans in its place. The Apostle also says something tender and severe at once: “For you were as sheep going astray: but you are now converted to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” Men fail. Offices are abused. Public reputations swell and collapse. Media figures posture and then fall quiet when the cost of speaking rises. Bishops alternate between grandstanding and surrender. But the Bishop of your soul is not one of them. Your soul is not finally entrusted to the diocesan machine, Roman press releases, or to a class of commentators who have learned how to monetize indignation while rationing truth. Your soul belongs to Christ. The Good Shepherd and the Hireling Good Shepherd Sunday is always beautiful. In our times it is also savage. “The good Shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling… seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and flieth.” Our Lord does not speak here in abstractions. He gives us a permanent law of discernment. How do you tell the shepherd from the hireling? Watch what happens when the wolf appears. The shepherd stays. The hireling calculates. The shepherd bleeds. The hireling issues statements. The shepherd risks himself for the flock. The hireling protects his platform, his access, his reputation, his relationship to power, his place at the table, his future invitations, his fragile standing inside approved circles. That text does not apply only to bishops. It applies just as sharply to the broader Catholic public square. We have seen plenty of men who built their brands on sounding alarms under one regime suddenly discover the virtues of patience, nuance, deference, and strategic silence under another. They can still diagnose danger when it costs little. They become wonderfully complex when the target is too close to home. The wolf is plainly in the field, but the hireling has a podcast to protect. Our Lord says the reason is simple: “He hath no care for the sheep.” Not enough care, perhaps, to risk anything real. Enough to perform concern. Enough to maintain the tone of seriousness. Enough to lament division in the abstract. But not enough to stand between the wolf and the flock. Traditional Catholics should hear this Gospel as both warning and consolation. The warning is that not everyone who speaks constantly about the crisis is a shepherd. Volume is not courage nor is visibility fidelity. Many men are brave only within controlled limits. They will denounce enemies far away and whisper about the ones standing over them. The consolation is greater. Christ knew there would be hirelings. He described them ahead of time. He was not surprised by clerics without backbone, official guardians who abandon the sheep, or by religious voices that prefer the safety of ambiguity to the cost of plain speech. The presence of hirelings does not prove that Christ has abandoned His Church. It proves that He told the truth about the kind of men who would infest her visible structures. This is one reason traditional Catholics must stop expecting emotional stability from the institutional Church as she now appears. Expecting maternal clarity from a system now dominated by bureaucrats, careerists, ecumenists, and liturgical vandals is like expecting clean water from a poisoned well. You may still find remnants, still find grace, still find fragments of fidelity, but you should not be shocked when the dominant voice is false, compromised, or evasive. Our Lord already told us what hirelings do. “I Know Mine, and Mine Know Me” After exposing the hireling, Christ returns to the heart of the mystery: “I am the good Shepherd: and I know Mine, and Mine know Me.” This is the line that gives peace to Catholics who feel scattered and forgotten. The postconciliar crisis has done more than corrupt institutions. It has produced loneliness. Many traditional Catholics feel as though they are living in fragments. The nearest reverent Mass may be far away. Friends grow weary. Families do not understand. Priests who once sounded steady begin trimming their words. One diocese suppresses. Another tolerates. A third smiles while slowly strangling what remains. Everywhere the pressure is the same: stop noticing, stop comparing, stop speaking, stop resisting, stop remembering. But Christ says He knows His own. He does not know them merely as members of a crowd. He knows them in particular, in their fidelity, in their grief, in their efforts to keep the faith when nearly everything around them has been redesigned to weaken it. He knows the mother trying to hand on catechism from the old books because the parish program is spiritual oatmeal. He knows the father driving long distances for the old Mass. He knows the young Catholic who has discovered tradition and now sees the wreckage with painful clarity. He knows the priest who says what he can and suffers for it. He knows the layman who feels stranded between official propaganda and trad-world evasions. None of these souls are anonymous to Him. And just as importantly, “Mine know Me.” That is the crucial thing in an age of confusion. The sheep know the Shepherd’s voice. They know that the voice of Christ does not sound like the slogans of the modern Church. It does not sound like sentimental humanitarianism. It does not sound like therapeutic accompaniment without judgment. It does not sound like endless dialogue with the world while the sanctuary burns. It does not sound like the reduction of religion to community, migration policy, ecology, process, inclusion, or mood management. The faithful know His voice because it has a certain ring. Majesty. Clarity. Sacrifice. Command. Mercy that heals by conversion, not mercy that flatters corruption. It means the present confusion, however widespread, is not ultimate. The instinct that draws Catholics to the old Mass, the old doctrine, the old devotions, the old moral seriousness, is sheep recognizing the Shepherd. To Thee Do I Watch at Break of Day The Offertory is one of the loveliest cries in the whole Mass: “O God, my God, to Thee do I watch at break of day.” That is the posture of the remnant. Not frenzy. Vigil. The faithful remnant in every age has had to learn how to live before dawn. There are moments in history when the sun seems high and Christendom appears solid and flourishing. Then there are ages like ours, when one keeps watch in darkness, with only the promise of morning and the discipline of prayer. This Sunday teaches us how to live in that hour. We watch at break of day by refusing spiritual amnesia. We remember what the Church was, what she taught, what she prayed, what her saints believed, what her liturgy formed in souls. We watch by refusing to call ruin renewal, refusing the narcotic of official language, and by holding fast to the treasure handed down, even when the men charged with guarding it have squandered their inheritance. But we also watch with uplifted hands. The Offertory pictures worship. If traditional Catholics are to endure, they must remain supernatural. The crisis has dragged many into a habit of permanent surveillance, where every day becomes another hunt for scandal, another exercise in confirming how bad things are. Much of that work has its necessity. Yet if it is not carried inside prayer, sacrifice, and liturgical life, it hollows the soul. One can become expert in cataloguing corruption and still forget how to adore. The altar saves us from that deformation. The sacrifice of Christ, represented in mystery and accomplished with power, is the center that the revolution could not destroy. Men altered rites, diluted language, and scattered the flock, but they did not become masters of grace. Christ still feeds His sheep. Christ still applies His Passion. Christ still gives healing blessing through the holy offering. The Secret says exactly that. What the sacred mystery signifies, it truly accomplishes. That is why the old Mass has always been more dangerous to the revolution than a thousand essays. It forms souls that cannot be easily managed. It teaches sacrifice instead of performance, adoration instead of activism, hierarchy instead of egalitarian chatter, mystery instead of self-expression. It puts God back at the center, and once that happens the whole conciliar apparatus begins to look thin and contrived. Having Received the Grace of a New Life The Postcommunion brings the whole Sunday to rest in thanksgiving: “Grant unto us… that having received the grace of a new life, we may ever glory in Thy gift.” That is the final note. Gift. Traditional Catholics are often tempted to think only in terms of deprivation. We have lost this. They took that. These bishops are corrupt. Those priests are compromised. The media class is cowardly. Rome is diseased. Much of that is true. But Eastertide forbids us to end there. The faithful are not merely people who have been robbed. They are people who have been given something that the thieves cannot touch. A new life. That life does not depend on the smile of a bishop, the favor of Rome, or the honesty of Catholic celebrities. It comes from the risen Christ. It flows into souls through grace. It deepens in prayer, sacrifice, doctrine, penance, and reverent worship. It survives catacombs. It survives exile. It survives the collapse of institutions. It survives even long periods in which the official face of the Church appears disfigured and hostile to her own inheritance. So this Sunday does not ask traditional Catholics to pretend that things are fine. They are not fine. Wolves, hirelings, and scandal are real. Silence in the face of corruption is real. But none of those things are final. The final thing is that Christ knows His own. He has not fled. He has not negotiated with the wolf. He has not forgotten the sheep scattered across dioceses, chapels, living rooms, and lonely roads. He still gathers. He still heals. He still feeds. He still watches over the souls entrusted to Him. And when the world seems overrun by bad shepherds, that is precisely when the faithful must cling more tightly to the one Shepherd who lays down His life and never abandons His flock. https://open.substack.com/pub/bigmodernism/p/the-good-shepherd-does-not-flee?r=2x82t4&utm_medium=ios