There is something freeing about recognizing that if Jesus is our shepherd, then we must be His sheep. That means that we can allow ourselves to be shepherded and not focus on trying to be whom we are not.

If you are perfect, you do not need a shepherd. If you are not perfect, you do. But what if you think you are perfect and in fact you are not. You will act like you don’t need a shepherd right up until you become a lost sheep in a precarious situation.

I remember this gentle priest at St Charles Borromeo Parish in Point Loma, San Diego, California. He never raised his voice, he only spoke in this gentle manner, except one time. That was when he preached that we must never take ourselves too seriously. We have luxury if we realize that we need a shepherd who helps us in our humanness. If we do take ourselves too seriously, then we are too busy being too serious than allowing ourselves to be shepherded.

There is a practical reality to this. A Salvadoran priest who stops by here on his journey to visit his parishioners in diaspora told me about visiting Europe. There is little faith there, and nobody smiles. We have the luxury of not taking ourselves too seriously. We have a shepherd who wants us to know His joy. We allow him to be our shepherd and we allow ourselves to be shepherded. That will give us time to know his joy.