One of the amazing things about the Catholic Church is the continued and unbroken tradition that is hers of handing down throughout 20 centuries the unchanged teachings of Jesus Christ.  Christ commissioned His apostles, the foundation of the Church, to go into all the world and make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that He had commanded.  This the Church has done.  You can take any one of the Catholic teachings – the Eucharist for example – and trace the Church’s teaching all the way back not only to the New Testament itself, but to constant and repeated presentations all through the centuries of the Church’s history.  In fact, this very study has been done… by John Henry Newman of 19th century England:  he, a very well-read scholar and fellow at Oxford (and a non-Catholic at the time) had noted that the Catholic Church of his own day looked very much different from the Church of the earliest centuries; but then so did all the other churches that had broken with Rome and claimed to be true to Christ’s teachings.  Which one was right, authentic?  To answer his question, Newman launched into a detailed study of all the more contentious teachings of Catholicism – Christ’s real Presence (body, blood, soul and divinity) in the Holy Eucharist, the role of the Pope as the Successor to Peter, the Catholic veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, purgatory, and so forth.  Newman took each of these Catholic teachings, and he was able to trace each one all the way back through the history of the Church.  Certainly there had been a true development of these teachings – that is, an ever-increasing understanding of them on the part of the Church – but the line of teaching was unbroken.  He was amazed at the clarity of the witness of history, so much so that he himself sought out a Catholic priest, made his confession, and was received into the Church.  He went on to become one of the most famous of all the converts of the 19th century, a Catholic priest and eventually a Roman Cardinal under Pope Leo XIII.

     Teaching, doctrine… how important it is!  From the very earliest days of the Church this was the Christian understanding of things.  Open your New Testament and peruse the earlier epistles of St. Paul – Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians – they are all occasioned by the Apostle’s fervent desire to correct doctrinal aberrations among the earliest Christians.  “I am astonished,” wrote the great Apostle to the Christians at Galatia, “that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel” (1:6).  Then go on and read St. Paul’s letters to the young bishops Timothy and Titus, and see there how he repeatedly urged and commanded that they correct doctrinal falsehoods and uphold the true Faith and hand it on faithfully to the next generation.

     We see how important this all is even in today’s Gospel reading.  There we notice our Lord trying to evade the crowds of people seeking Him so that He and His disciples might have some rest.  But everywhere Jesus goes there they, hordes of people, and St. Mark notes in his Gospel that Christ, upon disembarking from a boat, “saw a vast crowd.  He pitied them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd….”   Sheep without a shepherd.   Anyone who knows anything about sheep, knows how tragic and desperate such a situation can be.   For sheep will follow each other over a cliff or into rushing water; they know nothing of how to band together for defense against wolf or bear.  They are helpless and will run this way and that in fear but will find no escape from danger.  Sheep, in order to survive, need a shepherd.  Is it any wonder that our Lord referred to people as sheep?  For people will follow after the most absurd things, become enslaved to the latest fashions, define their whole happiness around a single event or thing, believe the most ridiculous things, refuse to acknowledge the most obvious truths (especially truths concerning morality) and do terrible damage to themselves – body and soul – in the process.  We need a shepherd.

     Well, here He is.  Here is the Good Shepherd Himself, Jesus Christ, who referred to Himself by that title.  He sees all these people, this vast crowd of people, pushing and shoving, hoping for miracles and handouts, longing for some consolation of peace.  And what does our Lord do for them?  St. Mark writes that as Jesus beheld the human mass before Him, moved with pity for them, “he began to teach them many things.”

     Ah yes, the Good Shepherd, He who so often showed forth the great compassion of God by being with poor sinners, by miraculously feeding the hungry, healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead – here He is now getting to the very root of the problem:  He is teaching the people, teaching you and me, meeting us at the point of our deepest need:  to see the truth, to give ourselves to it, and then to know the marvelous freedom that comes from that, just as Jesus promised – “the truth will set you free.”

     And here is the mission of the Church, following after Jesus, displaying, one hopes, His compassion and teaching in His name that same truth given by Jesus, defended by St. Paul and the other Apostles (even to the death of martyrdom), and carried on down through the ages of the Church’s life.  For there are sheep – vast crowds of sheep – in every age who need the Good Shepherd, need to hear what He has taught, and continues to teach in and through His Holy Church, so that they – you and me – might be gathered safely into the one flock, under the one Shepherd, set free by the truth of Catholic teaching and preserved from all that would harm us on our way through life.  We’re sheep.  Admitting that is the first step in really hearing Jesus teach, like He did that day when His pity was aroused by all those people expectantly seeking Him out, like sheep without a shepherd, sheep who, whether they realized it or not at the time, had run into the Good Shepherd.  And He began to teach them many things….