The Gospel reading tells us how Jesus was moved with pity, seeing how the crowds were harassed like sheep without a shepherd. Very often Jesus is portrayed as a shepherd taking care of sheep. We are the sheep that the Lord tends to. But oh, how much easier it would be to take care of us sheep if only we were as docile and obedient to the Good Shepherd.
In reality, we are rowdy, divisive, unruly, arrogant, selfish and egotistical – very different from how sheep are. But Jesus chooses to see the best in us and he persists to tend to us as the Good Shepherd, even if we are beset with much blindness and selfishness.
Have we made it easy for the Lord to tend to us? Have we been obedient and cooperative with him? Or have we persisted to being the perennial lost sheep that he continually goes out of his way to bring back to the fold, again and again?
Perhaps we have been both. What is important is that we always remain with the Good Shepherd.
At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that there are not enough workers to attend to the harvest, that is, the harvest of attending to the multitudes of God’s people in the crowds and in the peripheries.
Christ poses this challenge to us also: not only to pray for more workers to follow the example of the Good Shepherd, but to be shepherds ourselves emulating the example of Christ. We, too, can be of service to Christ the Good Shepherd, in our families, in our places of work and ministry, and in the different circles we inhabit.