One of the first procedures that public speakers learn is not wasting their best
material. It makes no sense to give a real barn-burner of a speech if you only have four people to hear it. Then if you try to use it again in front of a bigger crowd you can be accused of recycling material and being unoriginal. It’s why I’m hoping that the good people of this region have a short memory, because I’m not terribly old, haven’t had a particularly interesting life, and therefore only have so many “homily-worthy” stories.

Along these same lines, as seminarians we experienced this phenomenon from the standpoint of the people who lived with the priests who gave big inspiring speeches to donors with some regularity. We had heard most of the Rector’s great material five or six times before, so we would take bets on which old chestnut he was going to break out depending on the situation. I won three dollars as a deacon because I accurately predicted some of the exact verbiage he would use.
 
Even though it was repeated with some regularity (though most of the donors would never know it), one of Fr. Rector’s most impactful stories had to do with a shepherd he knew when he was a young novice at a monastery in Ireland where he grew up. One of the members of his community was charged with taking care of the sheep, and it occupied nearly every waking moment of his day. He and the sheep bonded so closely that their internal clocks synced up. They woke up at the same time, walked all the same paths together, and knew each other’s habits. Father would always include the detail that if the shepherd was on the other side of a wall and he coughed, the sheep would come running to find him, because they knew him so well that they knew it was his cough and no one else’s.

I sometimes think of this story and the  familiarity demonstrated in it when Good Shepherd Sunday occurs every year. It’s worth noting that the Church devotes a Sunday in Easter to his role as shepherd in our lives. Throughout the Gospels Jesus tells us that He is many things. He is the vine. He is the gate. He is the way, the truth, and the life. But his role as shepherd is so integral to our understanding of our relationship with Him that we take this Sunday to reflect on it.
 
As the monastic shepherd became one with his flock, we must learn an even deeper love and closeness to Our Lord, the true shepherd. I know that it is difficult in any age to think of ourselves as sheep. The culture tells us to be bold, to lead and not follow, and to blaze our own trail. In many circumstances, that can be a great thing. But when we have such a leader as Jesus, failure to humble ourselves and follow in His ways is ruinous to our lives. It is better to follow Christ as one of His sheep than to boldly blaze a trail to our own destruction. May Christ the Good Shepherd live forever in our hearts.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McCullough