The Holy Spirit Wants...

Solemnity of Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. When it comes to the different Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the one with whom most Catholics are probably least familiar.  We learn much about the Father through the Old Testament and from Jesus, who is the revelation of the Father.  Christ, while revealing the Father, also helps us to know Him better through the Gospels.  But then He ascends into heaven, and leaves us the Holy Spirit, who works in the Church.
    For our part, we are probably used to invoking the Holy Spirit when we have an instinct to do something or not do something.  And certainly, the Holy Spirit guides our actions, whether sought out or avoided.  But sometimes it’s also simply our instincts pushing us towards or away from something.  And do you ever notice that every group seems to claim the support of the Holy Spirit?  Both those who advocate teachings contrary to the faith, like women’s ordination, as well as those who hold to the faith revealed to us by Christ will argue from the authority of the Holy Spirit that their course of action is what God wants.  
    Some see in the Gospel according to John, as John and Peter run to the empty tomb at the instigation of Mary Magdalene, a distinction between the hierarchical nature of the Church (represented by Peter, our first pope) and the charismatic nature of the Church (represented by John, the one loved by the Lord).  John (charism) arrives at the tomb first, but waits for Peter (hierarchy) to go in.  Throughout the history of the Church, these two groups have oscillated back and forth for more influence.  The Second Vatican Council, in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, states, “The Church, which the Spirit guides in the way of all truth and which He unifies in communion and in works of ministry, He both equips and directs with hierarchical and charismatic gifts.”  In other words, both the hierarchical and the charismatic are gifts of the Holy Spirit, all given for the salvation of souls.
    I mention this because the Holy Spirit is often invoked by some for pushing the Church to new realities, while others invoke the Holy Spirit as the one who brings order to chaos.  In reality, both are right: the Holy Spirit pushes us beyond our comfort zone, but also orders and unifies all of creation.  We see this in the Upper Room scene at Pentecost.  On the one hand, the Holy Spirit took those who probably knew only Aramaic, Hebrew, and possibly common Greek, to those who proclaimed the Gospel so that everyone present, from many different parts of the Roman Empire, could understand the proclamation of the Gospel in their own tongues.  The Holy Spirit pushed the disciples out of the comfort of the Upper Room, and eventually to lands as far as India to the east, down to North Africa and Egypt, over to Rome, and lands in-between.  It helped the Apostles discern that non-Jews could become members of the nascent Church without becoming Jewish and being circumcised.  
    On the other hand, the message that the disciples proclaimed was the one Gospel of Jesus Christ, the one message of salvation.  As the disciples traveled far and wide, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church expanded its influence, and began to rid the world of the worship of demons in the pagan religions.  The Holy Spirit united all those who wanted to follow the Lord to be united in faith and morals, as discerned by the Apostles and their successors.  
    Even before that, the Holy Spirit is the one who spoke through the prophets, who were often a bit…eccentric.  The prophets were often the outcasts of society, because they called society from its rejection of God back to fidelity.  The Holy Spirit inspired King David to dance with abandon before the Ark of the Covenant as it was brought into Jerusalem, which dancing David’s wife Michal mocked because it made David look too much like the common people.
    But the Holy Spirit also took the primordial chaos and ordered it into light and darkness, land and sea, different forms of animals, and was given to our first parents to give them the breath of life.  The Holy Spirit guided sacred authors to compose literary works to communicate God’s saving will, and guided the bishops to choose which works were, in fact inspired by the Holy Spirit, and which were simply the works of man that also told stories that involved God.  
    In our own lives, too, the Holy Spirit often pushes us beyond our comfort zone.  He fills us to continue the proclamation of salvation through Christ.  He sometimes puts us in situations we never expected, sometimes even dangerous situations.  But, as our Advocate, He pleads our cause and gives us words to respond to our attackers, as He did for St. Stephen.  
    But as He pushes us to new realities, He does so with the continuity of what has come before.  The Holy Spirit deepens our understanding of what God desires for His people, but without contradicting what came before.  For example: the Holy Spirit has revealed that the Church is meant to be led by the Pope, the Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter.  That is a truth that can never be rejected, without rejecting what the Holy Spirit has revealed.  At the same time, the Holy Spirit can guide the Pope to understand how to exercise that power in new ways.  The Holy Spirit has revealed that marriage is between one man and one woman for life.  That can never change.  But the Holy Spirit can give us new guidance on how to share that truth with those who have gone through a divorce, or those who struggle with same-sex attraction.  
    [Joshua and Halley: the Holy Spirit has led you here to this day when you will receive the fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of Confirmation.  You have come by different paths, but have come to this union of faith in what the Holy Spirit has revealed through the Church and her sacred teaching office.  The Holy Spirit will give you new ways to proclaim that one faith, and to witness to the life of Christ from this point on, and into the future, especially as you prepare for Holy Matrimony.  Be open to the Holy Spirit pushing you to spread the faith, but also stay faithful to that faith as revealed to us by God through His Church, which is still one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.]
    If we feel that the Holy Spirit is only keeping us in our “safe spaces,” then we are probably missing out on one aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit.  If we feel that the Holy Spirit is going against what has been taught infallibly before, then it’s not the Holy Spirit to whom we are listening.  Each of us will have different ways that the Holy Spirit operates in us.  No matter what, may we be open to the Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the Son is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Prayer's Jackpot

Fifth Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I hate to admit it, but I have, from time to time, asked God to win the lottery.  It wasn’t simply to get rich for myself, but because I would give money to the Church, probably help out some friends, and maybe set up trusts to support different charities even after I’m dead and gone.  In my ask, I always reminded God of how generous I would be, especially to the Church, as a way of helping Him to know that He could trust me with the responsibility of winning tens of millions of dollars.
    As our Lord talks about prayer and having confidence in what we ask of God, we may find it strange that I haven’t won the lottery yet (or maybe you have prayed the same thing and have not won the lottery, either).  “‘If you ask the Father anything in my name, He will give it to you,’” the Savior said in today’s Gospel.  And yet I can tell you that my request to God to win MegaMillions has not been answered.  So what gives?
    Of course, deep down we know that God will only give us what is good for us.  Elsewhere, Christ says, “‘What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?  Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?’”  God does not give us something that will bite us or hurt us, even if we think the thing for which we’re asking is good.
    Further, our Lord presumes that, as disciples, we are following the pattern He set for us, and being obedient to the will of the Father.  If we truly want to be obedient to God the Father, as Christ showed us, then when we ask the Father, we do so knowing that sometimes our wills are not fully conformed to His, and we might not need to receive that which He is giving us.  Sometimes that will mean we don’t receive something that we want.  Sometimes that will mean that we receive something that we don’t really want.  Remember that Christ asked in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might pass by Him if there was another way to save the world.  But, He ended that prayer with, “‘But not my will, but yours be done.’”  The Father had answered the prayer of our Lord over and over again, working miracles among the people.  This was made evident especially at the resurrection of Lazarus.  But God the Father’s will was also that His Son would die on the Cross to save us from sin, a will which God the Son fully embraced, with all its pain and suffering.
    Or think of St. Paul.  He talks about a thorn in his flesh, which he asked God to remove three times.  But God told the Apostle that this weakness was a way to manifest that the power came from God, not from Paul.  And that thorn was not taken away.  St. Paul had to endure it, as far as we know, for the rest of his life.  Somehow, that weakness was part of Paul’s salvation and the proclamation of the Gospel.
    Part of receiving also connects to our confidence and trust in God.  When we pray for something good, and we do our best to conform our wills to that of the Father, we still need to trust that God can do what we ask Him to do.  Christ in His hometown did not work many miracles because of their lack of faith.  Do we trust the words of our Savior that we heard today, that God will give us what we ask if we ask in the name of Christ His Son?  Or is our faith fickle that like of our Lord’s hometown neighbors?
    I can testify to times when I prayed in the name of the Lord, and what I sought in prayer was given to me.  I’m not saying this to say that I’m a saint or have special powers.  I am a sinner, trying to be holy, but not always succeeding, and any power comes from God, not from me.  I am simply an earthen vessel, trying not to get in the way of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes these, what I consider, miracles, have been about serious issues, like a person’s health.  Other times they have been for the finding of more trivial things, like stolen golf clubs or a stolen moped.  In one case, I can remember praying for a couple I know, and my prayers seemed to have no effect.  I prayed with them again, and the effect they were seeking came to be.  Again, this is not to attribute anything to me as if I’m special; I’m not.  God wants to answer our prayers, according to His will, whether the request be for something we feel is very worthy, or even for things that don’t mean as much.

    And sometimes the answer is no.  It wouldn’t be a Fr. Anthony homily without some reference to country music, and what comes to my mind is the Garth Brooks song, “Unanswered Prayers,” in which he sings about a girl he knew in high school whom he prayed he would marry, but his prayers went unanswered.  Years later he met his wife, and they met this old flame, and he was glad that God didn’t answer those prayers.  Or Brad Paisley has a song called, “No,” where he talks about different prayers he said, but “sometimes the answer is no.”  Sometimes we think our will is aligned with God’s, but it’s not, and it’s not for our good, so God can answer our prayers with the opposite answer we desire.  It’s not that God doesn’t care or doesn’t love us, but that He answers our prayer with a response that is better for us.
    It is easy to hear how God answers prayers and think, “yeah, but that’s for other people.”  Don’t just hear, but live the word, be a doer of the word, and trust in God’s answers to your prayers.  Go to God with any need or desire you have.  Submit it to the will of God, and then trust that the answer you receive, either yes or no, will be good for your own salvation and the salvation of those you know and love.  God’s answers are a jackpot worth even more that a MegaMillions prize, because they bring us closer into the life of the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Better than Christmas

Fourth Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I will beg your forbearance, as I address my homily primarily to the First Communicants, though I pray it will edify all present.
    My dear boys and girls receiving our Lord in the Eucharist for the first time: when I was your age, the celebration of Christmas was one of the highlights of the year, as I imagine it is for you.  Yes, we went to Mass to celebrate the real reason for Christmas (and the reason it’s even called Christmas: Christ’s-Mass), but honestly, I was more excited for what presents would be under the tree on Christmas morning.  Part of the joy was the wrapping around the presents, because it took some time to realize just what I had received.  And my parents didn’t let us pick out the presents (probably both to avoid the chaos of three kids all grabbing for gifts, as well as to get pictures of what we opened), but my dad would pick one out at a time and give it to us so that we could unwrap it and see what we received.  Some of the gifts would be less exciting than others (I was not often a fan of the clothes that we inevitably got as gifts), but I would usually have a gift or two that really excited me and which I treasured for the near future.

    Today is not Christmas, but today you are all receiving the most precious gift of all: the gift of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  You are all dressed so nicely, to show how important this special day is.  And I imagine you are maybe as excited as you might be for Christmas, because of this treasure that our Lord is giving to you today.  And yes, just like at Christmas, there will be pictures, too, at least with me after the Mass, but probably with your family as well.
    Our Lord gives you this gift because of how much He loves you, and how close He wants to be with you.  In this Mass, you get to come close to Christ because we participate in His crucifixion, which is what the Mass presents for us once more, though without the pain and the blood.  But even though you have come close to Christ at each Mass, today He comes closer to you than anyone else will ever be to you, as you receive Him into yourselves through this Most Blessed Sacrament He gives us. 
    Having met with you, I know that you know that this is not ordinary bread.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, and the ministry of me, a priest who gets to act in the Person of Christ, God Himself changes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.  And in doing so He connects us back to the sacrifice that opened heaven for us.  Whenever we receive the Eucharist, we receive a little bit of heaven inside of us.
    And we need that bit of heaven, because it prepares us for that place that we all want to go many years from now when we die.  Our Lord tells us that the way to get to heaven is narrow, and not many people take it.  But He also says that if we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have eternal life within us that helps us make the decisions that lead us on that narrow road to heaven.  Receiving the Eucharist takes away our venial or small sins, and gives us strength to follow Christ.
    Following Christ is sometimes hard, because we all have temptations to do things that Christ doesn’t want us to do.  Christ knows those temptations won’t really make us happy.  Maybe sometimes your siblings aren’t nice to you, so you are tempted to be mean right back to them, or even hit them or say things that hurt their feelings.  Sometimes your parents ask you to clean your room or don’t touch something that can be dangerous, and we don’t want to follow their instructions.  Receiving the Eucharist will help you to be kind to your siblings and be obedient to your parents.  As you grow, the temptations will change; adults have other temptations of their own.  But if you receive the Eucharist each week, you will have everything you need to say no to any temptation that comes your way, no matter how old you are or what those temptations are.

    Today we also celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary, because we honor her in a special way in the month of May.  Mary is a model for us because, unlike Christ, she is not God.  She is like us in every way, though she never, ever sinned in her life.  She always said “yes” to God.  And so we also ask her to help us say “yes” to God.  And like your own mothers, she loves you very much and will help you to follow her Son, Jesus, and say “yes” to Him.  If you ever need someone to talk to when you’re sad, or someone to share really good news with when you’re happy, you can always turn to Mary, and she will help cheer you up or celebrate with you.
    St. James in our epistle said today that every good and perfect gift comes from above from the Father of lights.  He’s talking about God giving us every good thing that we need.  And today He does give you the best present ever: His Only-Begotten Son, Jesus, in the Eucharist.  Christ Himself also gave us Mary, His mother, to be our own spiritual mother.  Those are two amazing gifts, and you didn’t even have to unwrap them!  And you don’t even have to wait until Christmas to receive them.  From this point on, every time you come to Mass, as long as you don’t have a big sin, you can receive this perfect gift of the Eucharist.  And the gift of our Blessed Mother, Mary, is a gift that you can always have, even on the days when you can’t come to Mass. 
    Just like at Christmas, when we receive gifts, we say thank you to the people who gave them to us, today (and every time your receive the Eucharist) I invite you, after you receive Holy Communion, to kneel down and silently say thank you to God for giving you these amazing gifts.  Say thank you in your own words in your heart to God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

No Golden Age

Fifth Sunday of Easter
    We often tend to think of the early Church as perfect, where everything went as the apostles wanted it to go, where it was easy to follow Christ, and there were no struggles.  Today’s first reading should let us know that it was not as easy as we may have imagined.  Yes, the Apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, and many Jews were joining the Church by becoming baptized.  Even Greeks were seeking baptism and following Christ as His disciples in His new Church.  But the Greek-speaking Jews (St. Luke uses the word Hellenists) started to complain that their widows didn’t seem to get the same care as the Hebrew widows.  It also sounds like the Apostles had their hands full, and perhaps had too many responsibilities, which made their service less than it could have been.
    So, they created a new set of ministers in the Church, deacons, who would receive the Holy Spirit, and would take over the mission of service at table from the Apostles, so that the Apostles could focus on prayer and preaching the Gospel.  They chose seven men, including St. Stephen, to fill this new office in the Church.  We know the rest of the story: Stephen also starts preaching, and ends us getting stoned to death.  More and more persecutions start, and St. James the Greater, the brother of St. John, is martyred.  Antagonism becomes more and more heated between the members of the early Church and the Jewish leaders, who thought that Jesus was a heretic and led people away from God.  So maybe it wasn’t quite as easy and perfect as we so often imagine.
    Why mention this?  Because we ourselves experience difficult times in the Church, but it helps to know that it’s never been easy for the Church.  There are always new challenges and new opportunities for the Church.  There are always periods of growth, and periods of decline, whether from internal or external forces.  Even as we may be convinced that we are not in a golden age of the Church, there truly has never been a golden age: each epoch of history had its own joys and struggles to which the Church had to adjust.

    And while God desires all to be saved, and we know the ordinary path to salvation runs through baptism and daily living the life to which Christ calls us, God has also allowed periods of decline, not only in one parish, or one diocese, but sometimes every across countries.  The example that comes to my mind most often is North Africa.  North Africa, because of its connection to Rome, had been a vibrant area of the Catholic Faith.  Some of the greatest saints and theological writers had come from there, including St. Athanasius, St. Anthony, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine of Hippo.  There were struggles, as many of those saints had to deal with heresies that would spring up from time to time, but the faith was strong.  But then, the barbarians from Europe swept across much of North Africa from the west, and the newly formed Islamic religion came from the east shortly thereafter, and Catholicism was more or less snuffed out entirely in the matter of a hundred years or so.  Why did God allow this?  I couldn’t tell you.  But allow it He did.  Did it mean He loved North Africa any less than the rest of the world?  Certainly not.  But those few who remained had to adjust to a new way of living their faith in the midst of fewer structures and more regular persecution.
    How does the Church survive such struggles?  We stay faithful to Christ and following Him, we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, and we live up to our call to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own,” as St. Peter said in our second reading.  We ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, and follow the Apostles, as the Church did in our first reading.  We do not give in to the temptation to let our hearts be troubled, but have faith in God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–knowing that God’s ways are sometimes mysterious, but are always for our good.
    In our own diminishment as a parish, we can easily fall to the temptation to despair, to not trust in God’s plan.  But, as we prepare to meet this Wednesday, I would invite you to do what the Church has always done during difficult times: pray and trust in the Holy Spirit.  That’s why I invited you last week to pray the novena to the Holy Spirit, asking for His guidance for our parish, whatever the will of God may be.  And, as I also said last week, I don’t know exactly what that will might be; we will discern it together on Wednesday, given the facts that we have, and using the reason that God gave to us to help us to follow His will. 
    But the key is that, whatever you decide to recommend to Bishop Boyea after this Wednesday’s meeting, God calls us to remain faithful to Him and continue to not only say that we are Catholic, but show it by our actions, both in this parish and in the wider community.  People are still hungry to know the love of the Father, and Jesus reveals that to us, and He calls us to reveal Him to others.  No matter how the realities of the structural church change and call for adjustments, if we follow the Holy Spirit and live as disciples of Christ, we can have the confidence that we will one day see the Father, and be enveloped by His love in the kingdom of heaven.  There is not golden age of the Church.  There is simply the streets of gold upon which we hope to walk in heaven, as a result of our fidelity to Christ through all the days of our life on earth.  That is our ultimate goal, and the Holy Spirit will help us to get there.

Just a Soul? False!

Third Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  People can utilize social media well, and social media can lead to bad things or positions.  For example, someone I know recently posted a video of Rainn Wilson (Dwight from “The Office”) about how spirituality is so important because it is reality.  Ok, not so bad.  But then he goes on to say that we are not human beings have a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings have a human experience.  He goes on to say, “Who I am and what I am is not by body…”.  He continues on to talk about being connected to a higher reality, and the benefits of being connected to the divine.  To be clear, there are many benefits of being connected to God, especially for one’s overall health.  But that part in the middle stuck out like a sore thumb.
    Because it’s a heresy.  It’s just a rehashing of Manichaeism, which taught that the body was bad, or lesser than the spirit.  This was a pernicious heresy, to which St. Augustine of Hippo ascribed before he was baptized, and which swept Europe during the end of the first millennium, which gave rise to the preaching of the Dominicans fighting this old heresy with a new name (Albigensianism). 
    What is the drive that leads to such a push?  Well, probably one of two things.  On the one hand, we see so many natural evils that are no one’s personal choices, and so we might ascribe evil to the material of nature itself as a simplistic way to deal with why these natural evils happen without anyone willing them.
    On the other hand, when we sin, we can either accept responsibility for our actions and repent, or we can blame our actions on something else, and seek to avoid responsibility and punishment.  And we’ve been blaming someone else since the beginning.  “The woman you put here with me…”; “The serpent tricked me…”.  So if we can ascribe most of our evil actions to the body, and say that they don’t have an impact on the soul, then most of us are probably not only getting by when it comes to following God, but doing very well, and probably on the straight road to heaven.  If all you had to worry about was spiritual sins (judging others in your mind, not believing the right things, wishing others harm, but never following through with your actions), most of us are probably saints right now. 
    But, of course, we are not simply spirits.  We are a cohesive unity of spirit and body.  What we do to one, affects the other.  If we choose to sin in the body, it has effects on the soul.  And even when we sin at the level of our souls, there are effects on the body. 

    That unity is part of what we celebrate at Easter, and our belief in the union of body and soul is based upon the fact that Christ rose from the dead, not just in the spirit, as we will do at our death until the general resurrection at the end of time, but also in the body.  As He said in the Gospel today, “A little while, and you shall not see me, and a little while again and you will see me.”  He died, that is to say, His soul left His body, but then they were reunited and He returned to His disciples so that they could see Him again.  In some of the accounts of the Resurrection, the disciples think their Lord is a ghost, but He asks for food so that He could eat, and assured them that He was not a ghost.  Indeed, He asks Thomas to feel the wounds in His hands and side, not only as the proof that He is the same person, but that His body is there. 
    And because we are that union of soul and body, as confirmed to us by the Risen Lord, St. Peter can encourage us to refrain from our carnal desires.  Yes, sometimes what the soul wants and what the body wants are not the same thing.  But they are still in the battle for eternal life together, and what one does affects what happens to the other.  And this is not just with our desires to be fruitful and multiply, but also how we submit to legitimate authority, the example we give to believers and non-believers alike, so that they can see that the life to which Christ calls us is, in fact, possible, and helps us find true joy and freedom.
    Because the soul and body are one, even after we die, and our soul leaves our body, they will be reunited one day.  Hopefully we will receive a body for glory in the resurrection as we go to heaven, or perhaps have to be purified in Purgatory.  But, even the damned will receive back their body, or damnation and suffering, as they remain in Hell for all eternity.  Dante, describing those in the various circles of Hell, talks about the punishment that the bodies receive, from the punishments due to giving in to carnal desires, to the Beast, chomping on Judas and Brutus in the coldest, lowest level of Hell.  This is also why sometimes the martyrs are depicted with the wounds of their suffering, not because they suffer in heaven, but because what they allowed to happen to their bodies, rather than deny Christ, now becomes the sign of their victory, like St. Denis holding his head, St. Lucy holding her eyes, or St. Bartholomew holding his flayed skin.  

    That is also why our salvation is accomplished with physical things.  We don’t simply sit and think to ourselves: “I desire to be a child of God in the Son of God.  Now I am.”  No, we have water poured over our heads as the priest invokes the Blessed Trinity over us.  We do not simply sit in our rooms and think: “I am really sorry, and I’ll never do that again.”  The priest says, “I absolve you” with his audible voice.  We don’t only ask the Lord to fill us with Himself, but He gives Himself to us under the appearance of bread and wine, but that which is truly His Body and Blood, which we receive into us, so that He is closer to us than any other human could ever be.  God uses physical stuff with which our body interacts to create changes in the soul.  What happens to the one, affects the other. 
    So, if anyone ever suggests that we are simply spiritual beings, or souls trapped in a body, or that the material world is evil, which the spiritual world is good, you can counter with a direct quote from Dwight: “False!  Body; Blessing; Beatific Vision.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Voices

Fourth Sunday of Easter
    Chris Young, a country singer, has a song called “Voices,” in which he talks about the voices he hears in his mind.  But it’s not a sign of being crazy.  He sings about the voice of, “My dad saying working that job, / but don’t work your life away. / And mama telling me to drop some cash / in the offering plate on Sunday.”  Those are the voices that guide him in his life to help him make good decisions.

    Jesus today refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd, and says that His sheep follow Him because they recognize His voice, and He calls us each by name.  But it begs the question: do we listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, or do we listen to other voices?  Do we recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd in our hearts, or is another calling for us who does not know our name?
    We often refer to the voice of God in our heart as the conscience.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 1776 (quoting the Vatican II document Gaudium et spes) states:
 

Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey.  Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment.  […In his conscience] he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.

Our conscience is the voice of the Good Shepherd.  But too often, we now refer to our conscience as what we simply want to do, which may bear no relationship to what God tells us.  It is not a law unto itself, but the law given to humanity by God, to help a person know how to follow God in each particular circumstance.
    In order to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in our hearts, we have to know what that voice sounds like.  How do we familiarize ourselves with His voice, to make sure that it’s not merely our own?  We read the Scriptures; we learn what the Church, the Body of Christ, teaches, since Christ cannot teach one thing through the Church, and yet tell us to do something different in our hearts. 
    Part of recognizing the voice of the Good Shepherd is recognizing that He calls us by our name.  In the Gospel of John, on Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb but does not see Christ, but just the empty tomb.  Later that day, after telling the other disciples her experience, she returns to the tomb and sees a man, whom she presumes is the gardener, but it is really the risen Christ.  It is not until Christ calls her name that she recognizes Him as the same Jesus she saw die on the cross.  I think about the times when I was younger and in a crowd of family and/or friends.  If I was trying to get my mom’s attention, I might try saying “mom” a few times, but if that didn’t work (because there were lots of moms there), it always worked when I called out “Sue.”  She heard my voice and she heard her name and responded.  Jesus has that personal connection to us, and calls us by name.  Another example is that in the last moments of a pope’s life, if they are examining the pope to see if he is still alive, they will use his baptismal name, knowing that the name he was called by his parents would beckon him if he is still alive.
    Another important aspect of the voice of the Good Shepherd and calling us by name is that He doesn’t call us by our failures.  The thieves and mercenaries who want to steal the sheep and lead them away to bad pastures remind us of the wrong that we’ve done in order to keep us in that pain and hurt.  Jesus will identify our sins, when we have not chosen to follow God, but He doesn’t identify us with our failures, but still calls us by name, even as He calls us to repent.
    When it comes to our conscience, the voice of the Good Shepherd, we are not deciding what is right and what is wrong.  We have no power to call good: bad; or bad: good.  What our conscience helps us to do is to take what God has shown us is good or bad, and apply it to this particular situation in which we find ourselves.  If we find our conscience telling us to do something that God has forbidden, then we have not formed our conscience well; we have not accustomed ourselves to the voice of the Good Shepherd, but decided to wander off to other fields and listen to other voices rather than God’s voice.  As I said earlier, God will never contradict Himself.  So if we think something is right which the Bible or the Church says is wrong; or if we think something is wrong that the Bible or the Church says is right, we need to go back and evaluate to whose voice we have been listening. 
    If we are living a Christ-centered life, then we will hear voices every day of our lives.  No, not crazy voices, but the voice of God, helping us to choose the good and avoid the bad in all the circumstances of our life, which we call the conscience.  If we are following the voice of thieves and robbers, then we will miss the gate to eternal life which is Christ.  But if we follow the voice of the Good Shepherd, even if we have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death with Him, we know that we will make it through the sheep gate and “dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.”