The role of the shepherd

As I mentioned in the previous post, a person can forgive another person, if that other person accepts the former person's moral authority and is thus willing to lay the responsibility for his own actions into the former person's hands.

But the way, in which the responsibility is handed over, has to be considered more precisely, before the practice can be judged.

The two extremes in this matter are to either accept responsibility for no-one or to take full control of someone, who in turn follows blindly, neither of which fits the role of a spiritual leader.

But it is not a mere case of sticking to the middle either. Great confusion exists about what a rabbi is charged with. Not entirely surprisingly Pasolini advanced the idea that a spiritual leader would be supposed to give his disciples a new sensation of living - the eternal aim of homosexuals - and would thus take responsibility like a parent for his children, like which his disciples would also taunt him.

But that is not the role of a spiritual leader.

The role of a spiritual leader is to share the bitter meat of the easter lamb with his disciples, that is to define the belief by which his sect lives in good and in bad times, and it is the trust of his followers that he expresses their innermost belief that is the basis of the transfer of responsibility, that is to say that they approach him and ask him to tell them what their hearts believe and what it entails for them. And if he, in so doing, sees fit to forgive one of them, he has the authority to do so.

The relation is not for consumption, it is like one turns to his most capable friend, the common cause, the shared pursuit of God through life is what links the shepherd and his flock.