16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Jer 23:1-6
Second Reading: Eph 2:13-18
Gospel Reading: Mk 6:30-34
The apostles “had no leisure even to eat,” says the Gospel Reading. When they tried to “rest awhile,” the people followed them.
I retired as a pastor in 2015, when I was 73. Since then, I have continued teaching, hearing confessions, saying Mass, and “filling in” for other pastors. Now that I am almost 82, I can testify that being a pastor (Latin for “shepherd”) is not easy!
Perhaps the most grievous difficulty (in the original sense of “causing grief”) is the shattering of the peace St. Paul speaks of in the Second Reading.
The Bible describes loving shepherds who search for lost sheep and lead them to fresh green pastures. However, it also describes foolish sheep who have gone off on their own or followed shepherds who left them prey to wolves. The first is a comforting image of Christ the good shepherd. The second is a humiliating image of ourselves.
Sheep are stupid, as I remember from my childhood. They go after green grass under a thorny hedge and entangle their fleece; freed, they go straight back. Without a shepherd, they scatter, following anyone (including another sheep) who seems to be a leader, even into danger. They have no conception of their own welfare.
Archbishop James Carney (the Vancouver archdiocese’s archbishop from 1964-1990), must have known what sheep are like when he chose his episcopal motto: Servare unitatem (“To preserve the unity”).
Bishop Gary Franken of St. Paul Alberta, who, as a young priest, looked after Archbishop Carney in his last days, said that as the archbishop approached his death Sept. 16, people started wondering which day God would choose: perhaps September 14, the Exaltation of the Cross, or September 15, Our Lady of Sorrows. The actual day—Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian—was perhaps the most appropriate, Bishop Franken said, for both these men suffered martyrdom in defence of the Church’s unity.
“Sin and the burden of its consequences constantly threaten the gift of unity,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. From the very beginning, St. Paul had to exhort Christians to “make every effort to preserve the unity that has the [Holy] Spirit as its origin and peace as its binding force.”
The Pope, the successor of St. Peter, is “the first servant of unity,” said Pope St. John Paul II.
“If a man does not hold fast to this oneness of Peter, does he imagine that he still holds the faith?” St. Cyprian asked. “If he deserts the Chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, has he confidence that he is in the Church?”
In fact, “withdrawal of submission to the supreme pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him” constitutes “schism” (from the Greek for “split” or “division”).
If we maintain our own opinions in opposition to Church teaching—no matter what the subject—we say, as Martin Luther said, “I am sure that my doctrine is divine.” In saying that, we rely on human wisdom instead of trusting Christ’s promises to his Church.
“You cannot have God for your Father if you do not have the Church for your mother,” St. Cyprian wrote. “God is one and Christ is one, and his Church is one; one is the faith, and one is the people cemented together by harmony into the strong unity of a body... If we are the heirs of Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ; if we are the sons of God, let us be lovers of peace.”
I feel I speak for all pastors when I quote what St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “I beg you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree in what you say. Let there be no factions; rather, be united in mind and judgement.”
Father Hawkswell has now finished teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, however the course remains available in both print and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Starting Sept. 22, he will again teach the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver, and Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. The course is entirely free of charge and no pre-registration is necessary.
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