11th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

Sources Include in PDF: 

• The Jerome Biblical Commentary
• The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, and 
• The Navarre Bible, 
• Church History by Laux (TAN Books), 
• Introduction to the Bible by Laux (TAN Books), 
• A Guide to the Bible by Fuentes (Four Courts Press),
• Sharing Our Biblical Story by Russell for background information. Quotations from The Faith of the Early Fathers (3 volumes) by Jergens and Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (many volumes) edited by Odum.

We are a Priestly People and the Sheep of God’s Flock

As members of Christ’s holy covenant family, we belong to God. We are His personal possession and the sheep of His flock. The words of God to Israel in the First Reading are also meant for us. Jesus’ Kingdom of the Church is the new Israel (Gal 6:16) and the fulfillment of God’s promises to the Old Covenant people. We are a kingdom of priests and a holy nation called into covenant unity through Jesus Christ, the divine Shepherd (Ex 19:5-6; Dt 26:19; Is 62:2). Our Psalms reading reminds us what it means to belong to the divine Shepherd. The shepherd imagery is the same imagery that is found in our Gospel Reading in Jesus’ pity for God’s people who are “troubled and abandoned like a sheep without a shepherd” because the shepherds who are the chief priests and Pharisees have abandoned and misled God’s people through their hypocrisy and spiritual blindness (Jer 50:6; Mt 23:1-36). But in Jesus, God fulfills the promise He made to the Old Covenant people through the prophet Ezekiel that one day He Himself would come and save His scattered sheep (Ez 34:1-24). Jesus is the Good Shepherd and the Church is the priestly people who are the sheep of His flock (Jn 10:11; 21:15-17). We have been saved and reconciled to God (Second Reading), and just as God delivered and commissioned Israel, He has also delivered and commissioned the New Covenant people of God to make us a royal priesthood to serve His Church and to minister to a world full of lost souls seeking the mercy of God (Rev 1:6).

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Michal E Hunt, Copyright © 2014; revised 2023 Agape Bible Study; used with permission