Shepherd of Hope

The theme of this Sunday's Gospel (Good Shepherd) continues last Sunday's theme (Walk to Emmaus). Picking up again from Pope Benedict's Spe Salvi, we get to know more deeply the source of our hope, Jesus, our Good Shepherd. And understand why He is our only hope:

“The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want ... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me ...” (Ps 23 [22]:1, 4). The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through. The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his “rod and his staff comforts me”, so that “I fear no evil” (cf. Ps 23 [22]:4)—this was the new “hope” that arose over the life of believers (SS 6).

What comfort and consolation indeed it is for us to realize that the roads we are afraid to tread, the mountains we are scared to climb and the rivers we are reluctant to cross, to all these Jesus Christ our Shepherd had been, and has come back to accompany us as we walk these roads, as we climb these mountains, as we cross these rivers...

"...and to assure us that together with Him, we shall find our way through."

*pix from Von größter Schönheit