Ep 86 - A World Without Leaders

In this episode of Brother from Another Father, the focus turns to a deeper question at the heart of modern life: have we lost the ability to follow?

Drawing from the Gospel of the Good Shepherd, this reflection challenges the idea that true freedom comes from complete independence. While today’s culture emphasizes self-direction and personal truth, this episode explores how that mindset can leave us without guidance, without heroes, and ultimately without direction.

Inspired by the shift brought about by Vatican II, it reflects on the universal call to holiness—reminding us that every Christian, regardless of their state of life, shares in the same dignity and mission.

At the same time, it confronts a growing reality: a generation that struggles to name its heroes, hesitant to follow anyone, and often left navigating life alone.

This episode invites listeners to rediscover the balance between leading and following—and to ask a simple but challenging question: Whose voice am I listening to?

Because in the end, we don’t just need leaders.
We need the courage to follow the right one.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to episode 86 of Brother from Another Father as we celebrate the fourth Sunday in Easter. Many of you will have come across the British period drama TV series Downton Abbey, which has won much popularity and acclaim. Part of its popularity, I think, is its lucid depiction of the struggles of the English aristocracy to adjust to the world with changes brought about by industrialization and modernization. One of the most interesting struggles is the levelling out of social relations, which calls into question the very inequality that the English aristocracy was premised upon. This levelling out of social relations is most poignantly portrayed in the union between Tom Branson, the chauffeur of the Crawley family, and Lady Sibyl, the daughter of Lord Robert Grantham. When these two fell in love, there was of course a lot of resistance to this marriage from the Crawley family, who felt that their daughter Sibyl should not marry someone beneath her station in life. This union, their marriage, depicts a new and emerging notion that all people have equal dignity and that this should be the basis for social relations. This levelling out of social relations also had an effect on our church. Today we celebrate Vocation Sunday. Now prior to Vatican II that happened in the mid-1960s, we used to think that the call to being a priest or a nun was a higher calling than any other call. This is what I like to call the pyramid of holiness. At the top of the pyramid was religious life, living out the call to perfection by professions of vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Then below this highest calling of religious life came the diocesan priesthood. And then below the diocesan priesthood came being single, and at the very bottom of the pyramid was the state of married life. The Second Vatican Council effectively abolished this pyramid and stated that all Christians, by virtue of their baptism, are called equally by God to a life of holiness, whatever their state of life. And so Vatican II put forth this really novel idea that there is no state of life that can be considered to be holier or more worthy than another one. As Christians, we all share an equal dignity as sons and daughters of God through baptism. Vatican II also emphasized that through our baptism we all share a common priesthood, the priesthood of all believers. In the first letter of Peter, we are told that through our baptism we are all priests, prophets, and kings, together with Christ. In other words, we all have a vocation to be priests. We are all called by Jesus to share in his priesthood. What does this mean precisely, to share in the priesthood of Christ? What this means concretely is that we share in Christ's ministry of sanctifying the world. A priest is effectively a mediator between God and people, mediating the holiness, the forgiveness, and the grace of God to other people. In the old covenant there were many priests, each fulfilling this function of mediator in their own imperfect way. In the new covenant, though, there is only one priest, Jesus Christ. As baptized followers of Jesus, we all share in his one priesthood, both you and me. In different ways, of course, it is true, but the point is that there is only one priesthood. And so we all have a vocation to be a bridge between God and people, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ who lives in us. This is an incredible responsibility, but one that molds and shapes us into better people. To share from an example of my own vocation, this responsibility to be Christ to the people has driven me to deeper prayer, has given me the strength to curb sinful habits in a way that if I didn't re feel responsible for being part of Jesus' mission, I don't think I would have found that same strength. As I reflect on the lay vocation, I feel that there is something analogous, in the way that the vocation to be a mother of a father of children calls out a deeper response from you, calling you to be a better version of yourself that you would have been, that you would not have been, without the responsibility of being a good example to your kids and caring for them. But we cannot just stop at motherhood or fatherhood. We also have a responsibility to be a bridge to God for our friends, for our co-workers, for our relatives. I think that the knowledge that God is calling us to witness to these other people in our lives can produce in us a desire for holiness. In our reflection so far, we have focused on the aspect of our vocation that calls us to be leaders, to be priests, mediators who lead others to God through Christ. But there is another important aspect to our vocation that is the prerequisite of us being able to lead others to Christ, namely that we first be followers of Christ. We all have a basic human need to want to follow. In today's gospel, Jesus says that he is the good shepherd, who calls his sheep out. They recognize his voice and they follow. We derive so much joy from following because it responds to such a basic human need. But it is at odds with another basic human drive, that of independence. The tragedy is that our need for independence often eclipses our need to follow. Much of contemporary discourse on self-fulfillment emphasizes the importance of authenticity, of being true to yourself. This is captured in the modern catchphrase, you be you, or I'm doing me, or I'm following my truth. Part of being true to ourselves, we are told, is that each of us has to find his or her own individual path, which is completely unique. Now there is certainly some truth to this, but one negative consequence of a discourse on authenticity is that it can undermine our own natural human vocation to follow, to follow a leader, and to allow our lives to be entirely shaped by that leader. This fact became starkly apparent to me when I would work with high school students and young adults in parish ministry. Wanting to get a sense of what kind of values they were inspired by, I would ask them, Who are your heroes? Who do you look up to? Who are your idols? When I would pose this question to a group of youth who ordinarily would all be clamoring for a chance to speak and respond to questions, this question would fall flat on its face, with almost no one venturing a reply. It struck me that our modern Gen Z has emphasized individual fulfillment that we have a whole generation who are growing up without heroes, with no one they idolize or want to be like, because they have become so completely the center of their own universe. In a sense, they seem to have lost sight of the importance of following a leader. Part of the joy of following derives from the fact that we do not need to have it all figured out ourselves. This is the joy of blind trust, trusting that our leader will guide us to the right place. Now the blind trust of sheep who follow their shepherd unquestionedly has won them proverbial notoriety in the English language. We speak pejoratively about people who naively follow a leader blindly like sheep. Of course, when it comes to following human leaders, we need to have our wits about us, because they can mislead us. I think that this is what Jesus is getting at when he insists on the dangers of the sheepfold being penetrated by brigands and thieves in today's gospel. In our contemporary world, there are lots of voices that clamor for our attention and want to get us to follow them. If we give our unquestioning and uncritical support to politicians and other such leaders, we are letting our hearts be stolen away by thieves and brigands. But when it comes to Jesus, it is an entirely different scenario. Jesus can never mislead us. The same critical and questioning attitude that we must always have with regard to human leaders is precisely what we must let go of when it comes to following Jesus. We have to learn to trust in our shepherd, who will lead us to lie down in green pastures near restful waters. God bless and have a good day.