During the summer months, the Diocese of Bridgeport will be sharing homilies from pulpits all over Fairfield County in an effort to showcase our diversity and our communities of faith.
This week’s guest homilist is Father Peter Cipriani from St. Rose of Lima Parish in Newtown.
“I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble.” A shepherd is anyone who is in a position of authority, not in the sense of being one’s boss, but more so like a caregiver, a parent who protects, defends, nourishes and affirms a spouse or a significant other, who is meant to gather you up into one’s arms and press you to one’s heart, creating the condition that parents are meant to create for their children of security.
“You are the safest in this world in my arms because I love you and deeply, very deeply care about you.” Those in the medical profession who gather others who are ill, leading them toward improved health, A teacher who guides others along the way of knowledge that they may be positive contributors to society and why nothing encouraged the wrath of God more than when shepherds instead, assume the role of a ravenous and terrifying wolf preying on your fears and further intensifying your insecurities until a relationship of affection, intimacy and trust is all but impossible to live in the vice grips of fear, instead of the liberating arms of hope and love.
As the prophet insists today of God, our good shepherd, who we are to emulate in our caring and creations of secure environments. In his days, Judah shall be saved. Israel shall dwell in security and who of us do not crave security, especially for our children and why? One of the greatest threats to one’s mental health is insecurity and how it can often cripple one’s ability to be confidently loving, caring, and a boldly giving person. And sadly, because insecurity can become life threatening, we’re at the very least inflict, intense, emotional and often physical harm, there need to be shelters in place that provide that security, that safety, that insecure people are deprived of.
The bomb shelter craze of the 1960s, the haunting fear that the whole world was about to go nuclear because of the hatred between Russia and the United States as the Rolling Stones sang in “Gimme Shelter”: “Ooh, a storm is threatening my very life today. If I don’t get some shelter, oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away. War children. It’s just a shot away. I tell you love sister. It’s just a kiss away.”
We are not meant to live in the fear of annihilation, but the confidence and security of children of God. Our nations are meant to be extensions of our homes, one nation under God, our neighborhoods, extensions of our homes as well. The neighborhood watch area, keeping the peace, keeping the law, keeping things secure so that entire families may sleep in peace and why perhaps one’s vocation and perhaps why the one vocation we all have in common is that of a security officer or security shepherd to not only keep the peace and promote it, but only that peace we receive from Christ exchanged fully during the attendance of each Mass in church, which like our homes are meant to be for us, our greatest shelters.
Though a comedy perhaps these words from Paul Blart: Mall Cop should resonate with us in terms of being these law enforcement officers who assume the role of badge shepherds. Though we are enforcing the law of love as peace officers that Jesus defines in this way, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself:
He says, “I am honored to be in the presence of the greats from the past. Just looking at these faces reminds me of the question so many people ask, why do we do it? Why walk a beat knowing that on a typical day you’ll get zero pats on the back? I get it. We’re easy targets. Confidence is like a building. Don’t let others knock you down. Use the bricks they throw to build yourself up. But when you clip on that tie and holster, that flashlight at the loading dock, supermarket or industrial park, when everyone else is tucked into a warm bed and it’s just you against the night. And yet when people ask me, why do you do it? I have to laugh because they think I have a choice. I don’t. I like you didn’t choose security. Security chose me. You can’t just wipe it off you. It is you. Every morning I put my pants on one leg at a time. Then I slip on my soft-soled shoes And I hear the same calling you do: ‘Help someone today.’ Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But if being a security officer were that easy, anyone could do it. And sure, you meet all kinds of people in this line of work: shoplifters, pickpockets the freeloaders, stealing a nap in a Brookstone massage chair. Then there’s the confused people who can’t find her car on parking level F because she doesn’t have a car and there is no parking level F, and all of a sudden you’re asking yourself, why do I do it? Until a little boy with tears in his eyes tugs on your sleeve and says, Mister, I can’t find my mommy. That’s why you do it.”
I’ll close with this. If you believe the purpose of life is to only serve yourself, then you have no purpose. Help someone today. In other words, be someone’s shelter closer to home and reality. From the life of the saint whose life we celebrated this week, and patron saint especially of those in the medical field: St. Camillus, whose life inspired the creation of the Red Cross. We hear these words: “The mere sight of the sick was enough to soften and melt his heart, and make him utterly forget all the pleasures, enticements and interests of this world. When he was taking care of his patients, he seemed to spend and exhaust himself completely. So great was his devotion and compassion. In the sick, he saw the person of Christ. His imagination was so vivid that while feeding them, he perceived his patients as other Christs. His reverence in their presence was as great, and as if he were really and truly in the presence of his Lord. And to enkindle the enthusiasm of his religious brothers for this all-important virtue of inflamed charity, he used to impress upon them the consoling words of Jesus: ‘I was sick and you visited me.'”
Great and all embracing was Camillus’ charity, not only for the sick and dying, but every other needy or suffering human being found shelter in his deep and kind concern, which has motivated so many others to create shelters. The bitter that there is a need for shelters in the first place, but the sweet that there are those who care enough to create them, support them work and volunteer there.
A homeless shelter, for example, the pain of not having a place to call home, which means one no longer is connected to a group of loved ones called family. Domestic violence shelters, “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pastors, forcing them in their fear and terror to find safety in a shelter. “These are no strangers, people who are meant to love and nurture you, not threaten, abuse and harm you. Birthright and Malta House, shelters for frightened pregnant women. There should be no more secure dwelling in all the universe than a mother’s womb. But in our abortion frenzied world, there is a desperate need for shelters to encourage women, we are here for you, your child. Let us be your family, your shelter, your home.
When there is an issue in the workplace, we call security. When there is an issue in one’s life, one’s home, one’s heart, one’s country, and one’s world, and there always is, call security. Call, pray to Christ, who, removing the threat, healing the hurt, has then announced, “All is secure,” because he has risen. But the security that Christ provides comes from another form of being secure, as in secured as a child might be in her car seat, all strapped in. Prior to being secured to the cross by nails, Christ would be secured to a pillar where he would be scoured to an inch of his life. In each scourge, Jesus would endure and absorb the full paralyzing effect of all our insecurities, securing for us any number of graces that might assist us, if not to overcome our insecurities at the very least, transform them into opportunities of heroic, loving, caring, giving, and sympathizing with the many others who suffer these debilitating realities and assuming the heart of Christ, we might then share his divine and human concern.
“When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they weren’t like sheep without a shepherd. “Then he began to teach them many things, teach us many things at the school of his church, modeling for us many things: how to love, how to hope, how to forgive, how to heal, how to promote and encourage wellness, experiencing a trauma. If one does not seek a therapist, what hope, if any, is there to heal, experiencing life? If one does not seek Christ, what hope, if any, is there to live a fully purpose driven life?
Secure to a pillar, secure to the cross, that we might know the security of relief from all pain and fear, knowing that we are that loved. Living in the shadow of the cross is living within the shelter of the cross, that we might say with great confidence, “Even though I walk in the dark valley, I fear no evil for you are at my side.” And you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are at our side, now and forever.
