One of the most beautiful images in Christian art is Christ the Good Shepherd, carrying on his shoulders a lost sheep back to the safety of the flock and the shepherd’s care. It is an image that Christ applied to himself, drawing on Psalm 23 and other parts of the Old Testament where God is described as a shepherd of Israel. This is what Jesus is calling to mind when he says in John’s Gospel, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’. One of the early Church Fathers used this picture of the Good Shepherd to work out what it means when the church says that God joined our human life to his divine life in of the person of Jesus—what it means to say that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. The good shepherd, this church father observes, finds and brings the sheep back whole; he doesn’t rescue just a part of it, an ear or a leg snatched from the mouth of the wolf when, really, it’s already too late. No, the Good Shepherd brings the sheep safely home, entire and intact; he carries the whole sheep on his shoulders. By analogy, then, when God comes to save us in Christ we are saved entirely—not just our souls, or our minds, but our bodies, too. Not just those things about us that are strong and noble, but those things that are weak and less noble, too. This is possible because in Christ, God assumed the whole of our humanity. He took all of our life—every time and season—into God’s life. Indeed by his own suffering and death, Christ brings that, too, into God’s life—so that our suffering, our death is faced squarely by God.
This visual tradition, then, is a picture of the old theological maxim, ‘That which has not been assumed, has not been healed’. Our whole life is assumed by Christ, so that our whole life may be healed and saved. But, you might ask, for what? What is it that we are healed and saved for?
The end point of our salvation is union with God and today’s Gospel gives us a hint, a foretaste, of the glory of that union. The Church offers us the story of the Transfiguration twice a year: in August, on the feast of the Transfiguration itself; and on the Sunday before Lent (or in the Roman Catholic lectionary, on the second Sunday of Lent). In this narrative, we see the great joy of our redemption. As the hymn has it, “’Tis good, Lord, to be here!” For on the mount of Transfiguration we see Christ who is both the “fulfiller of the past” and “promise of things to be”: “We hail thy Body glorified, | and our redemption see”. Hearing this story before Lent reminds us that our salvation is not accomplished without the Passion, that there is no glory of the Resurrection without the glory of the Cross. God could have accomplished our salvation another way, but he did not—so we cannot do as Peter hoped and build dwellings as if they are a kind of ‘happy place’ from which we are reluctant to emerge into life’s difficulties. Christ bids us “leave the mount” but comes “with us to the plain”.
The war following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has now gone on for four years. The purposefully erratic interactions of some world leaders remain deeply concerning. We should pray. And as we pray, it would profit us all to remember that as much as Christ assumed the whole of our personhood in the Incarnation—that is, our minds, our bodies, our imagination, our souls—so he also assumed the whole of humanity. Salvation is not for one select portion of humankind, or those with particular customs or cultures, and it does not authorised us to impose our will on others—by force or by any other means. The English word ‘salvation’ has its root in the Latin ‘salus’—meaning health, safety or welfare. Since this is what salvation means, it must be offered universally because for salvation for the few would not be be true salvation, it would be the status quo. The Scriptures point us to the beautiful city of God in which “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, stand before the throne” (Rev. 7. 9). We are saved together, or we are not saved at all for the Good Shepherd who brings the sheep home brings not just one sheep, but the whole flock. As much as I am carried on Christ’s shoulders, as much as you are carried, so are our sisters and brothers throughout the world for we are all “one in Christ Jesus” and “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female” (Galatians 3. 18).
I have mentioned before that St Benedict stayed in a cave near Subiaco for three years, during which time he prayed and refined the thinking that would issue in his Rule and the establishment of the monastery at Monte Cassino. Pray and work – that is the Benedictine way. Pray and work. Even when St Benedict had a terrible vision of the destruction of his abbey (which occurred about 40 years after his death) he did not cease to pray and work.
St Benedict instructed that all guests at the monastery should be received as if they were “Christ himself”. If this discipline informed us, if we were determined to receive our neighbour as if they were “Christ himself”, how different would our actions be. As we heard earlier St Matthew describes the end of the Transfiguration in this way: “when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone”. But St Mark says this: “They saw no-one with them any more, only Jesus”. See in every person you meet only Christ. Do the same for those you see in the news. Think of each person in their potential for transfiguration. Think of them as someone with whom you might enjoy the perfect vision that is union with God, for whom Christ “left the mount” and “returned to the plain”. Think of their humanity made holy because Christ took it on himself. Remind yourself of the “great multitude” and the connection of our common life in Christ. For Christ is the Good Shepherd, the one who carries us home, the one who transfigures all of humankind. Amen.