Shepherding Quick Guide

September 22, 2025

Start kit and reference for the lost art of shepherding, aka spiritual warfare

By: Deacon Patrick Augustin Jones

Quick Guide Rules of Shepherding

The soul is God's unique breath breathed into each person at their conception. The soul is aeviternal: once created, it is immortal. Likewise, the body into which the soul is breathed, will be raised either to eternal death or eternal life. God's unique breath creates the human soul, which He intends to have additional beauty and virtue and graces.
Jesus will judge each soul on the Last Day. The soul is likened to a grain of wheat. Baptism removes the grain's chaff from its meat (Mt 3:12; Lk 3:17). Sin returns the chaff and diminishes the meat, God's breath. Much as the talent was taken from the servant who buried it, so throughout life in sin or virtue are the graces removed from and given to the soul, leaving the meat diminished or plump. Come the Last Day, goats, per Matthew 25, will become as chaff, having relinquished the graces bestowed upon their soul back to God, and be cast into Hell. They forever burn as chaff, a desiccated soul, the imprint of God whom they rejected but for whom they hunger eternally, flesh ever burning, never consumed (Hell is an act of divine mercy: for souls who reject God, the only greater torment would be being eternally in His presence); sheep will enter deep, abiding, eternal relationship with God. cf.: Life of St. Teressa by Herself, Ch. XL, No. 8-9.
God is Love (1 Jn 4:8). As the Most Holy Trinity is Three in One, One in Three, without confusion, so with Love. Love, to our finite minds, needs to be broken open to be rightly understood. Thus, Love, synonymous with God, is: love, truth, justice, and mercy. A perfect, divine unity; each requires the others to be fully understood as meant by divine revelation from within the tidal pools of infinity(cf. Deus Caritas Est. Pope Benedict XVI).
Jesus extols us to “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). This is the call of shepherding. Sacrificially love each other toward Christ and through Him toward eternal paradise.
Sheep, for shepherds are to presume all entrusted to his care are sheep rather than goats, that judgement being God's alone, will be judged for having fully run the race and loved one another as Jesus loves them (1 Cor 9:25). But beware! The enemy sows the wheat field of the faithful with tares, weeds among the wheat while those in the watchtowers sleep. These tares are the faithful who fall away, who do not fully run the race, who are not the predestined elect. The roots of these weeds entwine and choke the wheat unseen below ground while appearing above ground the same as wheat.
The journey of the soul is simple: Fear of God begets curiosity to know God; knowing God begets love of God; love of God begets desire to serve God; serving God begets the desire to unite our will to God's.
God's universal invitation through Jesus Christ includes the graces needed to fully run the race; however, a soul's free willed choices of virtue or sin aid or hinder its capacity to cooperate and receive these graces. The predestined elect, who are known by God from before time and space and for whom this entire universe was created, against all other possible universes, are granted reception of graces to aid them in fully running the Race. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux's cup analogy from The Story of a Soul comes to mind: some souls expand through holiness to hold more grace than others, so there is a hierarchy and diversity of holiness in heaven. These graces are the salvation arts. As faith without works is dead, grace must be exercised to be received (Jm 2:17). Like martial arts, the salvation arts must be experienced, taught, learned, practiced, and integrated into daily life if we are to wield them effectively and become, by the grace of Jesus our Christ, saints.
Our soul, our unique breath of God that only we can share with the world, grows as we wield the salvation arts. This is our inner saint (Gn 1-2; Ps 1-2) and growing in holy virtue (Latin for strength) fortifies our soul.
The salvation arts are weapons Jesus gives us through our Confirmation to defend against Satan's attacks with comparatively little effort on our part. Practicing them propels us toward Christ. The salvation arts include: Sacraments; ten commandments; prayer in all its many forms, especially Mass, the Divine Office, adoration, and the rosary, among others; devotions and sacramentals; six precepts of the Church; Virtues; gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit; Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy; Beatitudes; the Four Last Things; intellect, including mindfulness, logic, and reason; and corporal discipline (cf # 11).
Every choice we make either grows our saint and diminishes our sinner, or grows our sinner and diminishes our saint. Either turns us toward or away from Jesus our Christ increasing our momentum toward or away from Him (Ps 1-2). Each person's choices create the landscape around their soul, as we are each called to make choices that honor the temple God made us to be. For as Saint Paul says, “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Cor 3-16).
Correcting errors in a soul who has cultivated eyes of innocence, eyes that see the world as God sees the world, is a gentle matter. They may even self-correct or only need soft correction once. Stubborn souls and obstinate blind spots in any soul require greater action, to include appropriate corporal discipline such as time-limited vows of silence, carrying a rock for a day, extra labor, and the like. Practice that aids the soul always is doing all things practicable by human power. As Saint Teresa of Ávila explains, “It is true we cannot be free of sin, but at least let our sins be not always the same” (The Interior Castle).
Shepherding can be crisp, clear, blunt, soft, gentle, harsh, companionable, adversarial, sly, mocking, and many other expressions of love as appropriate. Consider Jesus as He says: “Oh how foolish you are,” “Go and sin no more,” “Ye of little faith,” “This kind only comes out with prayer,” “Get behind me Satan,” “Do you love me more than these?” “Feed and tend my lambs and sheep,” “Love one another as I have loved you.” A good shepherd's deepening wisdom aids him in discerning the flavor of shepherding appropriate to the person and circumstance.
A good shepherd knows shepherding requires urgency and clear direct truth, while balanced with understanding, mercy, and patience — especially for the lambs still growing and lacking the fortitude of muscle, structure, and stamina to handle the blunt. Yet to treat the entire flock as newborn lambs is a foolish way to shepherd. It weakens the whole flock, leaving it unable to repel blight, discern good pasture from poisonous tares, and recognize wolves lurking at the periphery or in their midst.
Patience is a flavor of virtue similar to bravery: it’s not about feeling brave in the face of fear but more about acting brave despite it. Likewise, patience is less about feeling calm as injuries fester, capacities languish, and questions come and go and more about engaging the world anyway, while we can, as much as we can, with contentment and joy. Such patience is only possible via faith.
Souls go where they focus their gaze. However faithful they intend to be, souls fixated on the rapids of life or the enemy, end up sucked in, churned about, and chewed up by the current, rocks, and downed trees of the rapids. Good shepherds aid their flock in lifting their eyes to Christ in all things, for he is always the way through. Notice and call out the rapids, maintain focus upon Christ. This is how the storm is becalmed through faith (Mt 8:26).
Saints travel in bunches, known as halos — aiding one another against sin and running to Jesus, our Christ. Peer faithful are called to shepherd one another. Faithful do well to form or join halos, in the fervent desire to accept Christ's invitation to be predestined elect at the races end. Each married person's primary halo is their husband or wife.
Sheep, including oneself, who are not progressing against foundational attacks by their sinner, should reflect honestly: how would a Saint respond in similar circumstances? Seek to integrate faith more deeply: guard time for prayer, create space for discernment, and act on what is already known of the faith. Listen to the halos God as placed around you — spouse, peers, superiors, and subordinates. When choosing a spiritual director or new halo, ask yourself: Who challenges me in new ways? Who do I avoid and why? Might they be part of the answer God is offering? The consequences to sin often are proportionate to the stubbornness with which it is held.
Shepherding is the intentional aiding of other sheep to turn toward and run to Jesus, our Christ.
Love the sinner (one who sins), hate the sin. To love or even tolerate the sin is to hate the sinner. As Saint Augustine of Hippo explains: “Whoever loves himself, not God, loves not himself ... he cannot love himself who loves himself to his own destruction” (as quated by St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea on Jn 21:18-19).
Give the inner sinner no quarter. A shepherd's staff is a multi-tool: a hiking staff for navigating rough terrain and seeking out the one lost; a lasso and lift for guiding sheep and rescuing the lost from hard-to-reach niches; a quarter staff and cudgel for defending the flock against wolves without and within the flock. All uses properly applied are pastoral.
The good shepherd corrects and accompanies, and in so doing administers Christ's love in such a way that it can be received and invites and challenges the lamb or sheep one next step toward Christ.
Jesus, our Christ, gave Saint Peter and his successors, and to a lesser degree, all disciples, the power of the keys, to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. Thus Christ grants the Church and her priests alone the authority and power to forgive sin —– clergy and disciples and likewise given the authority and power to shepherd souls. Moreover, in both divine and natural hierarchies, authority increases with greater fidelity to Christ: the closer one is to faithfulness to the Catholic Church, the greater one's authority as shepherd. For example, all parents have equal power and authority over their children(Eph 6:4); however, Catholic parents, who actively live the faith and receive grace from the sacraments, have greater capacity to correctly know and exercise that authority than less active or non-Catholic parents.
God's authority is bestowed on some of the faithful through various offices to shepherd others entrusted to them by Christ, the Good Shepherd (Jn 21:15-17). It is important to distinguish between power and authority: power is the ability to effect change; authority is the rightful and divinely granted prerogative to govern or make decisions. For example, a husband is called to be head of house and love his wife as Christ loves His Church (Eph 5:23-25). His wife is called to loving obedience, partner with her husband to shepherd their children in mutual love of Christ, and aid her husband in fulfilling his office as head of house. This mutual submission is rooted in charity and respect, reflecting the Church's own relationship with Christ (Eph 5:21). Clergy, by virtue of Holy Orders, receive authority in varying degrees over the flocks entrusted to them in parishes, dioceses, and the global Church. This hierarchical authority is not merely administrative, but is a sacred trust to serve the People of God (cf. Lumen Gentium, 18). When those in authority fail to rightly fulfill their duties, God, in His providence, may raise up faithful members of the Church to assist or correct — an example being Saint Catherine of Siena, who through her bold, humble obedience to God helped restore the Papacy to Rome. Thus authority within the Church is both a divine gift and a solemn responsibility, exercised in love for the salvation of souls.
Baptism washes away all original and personal sin; yet concupiscence remains ... a lingering scar of pride to reject God and pridefully make us our own god.
This voice of concupiscence tempts us like the serpent tempted Eve: “Did God really say ...?” (Gen 3:1.) It sparks a deep, concupiscent fear that God isn't who God says He is and thus, we aren't who God says we are and thus, God can't save us as God says and thus, death will consume us (Jer 17:5; Rom 8:38-39). Ergo, we must go it on our own and pridefully reject God and become our own god. Rarely is any of this consciously thought; instead, this temptation lurks beneath the surface like a choking weed, suffocating our divine life and capacity to breathe the breath God breathed into us into the world. Yet, by making ourselves our own god, we fall under the dominion of Satan, subjecting our small, lonely kingdom to Satan's rule for eternity.
Authority is God's alone to bestow. In the carnal world, for clarity's sake, power is earthly, carnal. God, of course, is omnipotent and omniscient and shares this through His authority. One's position may wield both authority and power, or one without the other, or neither.
All entrusted with authority bear a portion of the sins of those entrusted to them — except when they ardently strive to correct though faithful shepherding. A good shepherd can do no more than the Good Shepherd and must accept the free will of the sheep even as he fights for their salvation through sacrificial love, never abandoning them this side of death's veil (Rule of Saint Benedict, 2:1-10).
Concupiscence caved into is sin. Sin makes us deaf, blind, dumb, and stupid. The more we sin, the more our concupiscence grows, becoming our inner sinner. Sin begets more sin, just as holiness begets greater holiness (Ps 1-2).
A simple way of understanding all of salvation history is it is God restoring right relationship, found in the Garden of Eden. Thus, a key component of shepherding, and assessing how to shepherd, is to strive to heal broken relationship into right relationship.
Right relationship has four elements to it: relationship with God, self, others, and nature (Gn 1-2).
Emotions are barometers of right relationship — nothing more, nothing less.
Fear that God is not whom He claims and thus we are not who He claims, is the root emotion of broken relationship. Wounds from a broken relationship may deceptively appear in others, distracting us from the true source and leading us to harm those relationships while the true cause remains hidden. All disordered emotions are rooted in our soul's countenance as a strong temptation of at least one of the seven deadly sins — each a shadowed shape of fear At the root of all sin lies the fear that the foundational truths of Faith are not true, deceiving us into sin as we try to crown ourselves god.
'Busy,' in modern usage, is nearly always a sign of putting a lesser good ahead of a greater good. Working toward right relationship is neither busy nor noisy. Thus, where busy or noisy occur, we're doing it wrong and headed away from Jesus, our Christ.
One definition of sin is putting a lesser good ahead of greater goods (Saint Augustine's Confessions). Restore proper order and one is no longer busy.
Jesus said “my yoke is easy, my burden light.” If we are burdened or heavy, we bear sin's yoke, not Christ's. Set down sin's yoke and take up Christ's (Mt 11:30).
Fear of anything less than God is idolatry. Fear of imminent death is an expression of love for the life God has given us; therefore it is also an expression of the fear of the Lord. Phobias, in contrast, are not the same and are rooted in fear of death itself and driven by a desire to be our own god — trusting in oneself rather than in the Holy Trinity.
Love is the root emotion of right relationship. Love only comes from God and never deceives us, though we can be deceived by what surrounds it.
Good shepherds always remember they are first sheep, subject to all the foibles and failings of sheep.
All truth is simple and all simple things are hard. Truth can be explained clearly in less than a minute, yet a lifetime is insufficient to understand its depths.
The surest way to know we love God is to love our neighbor. Sure ways to love our neighbor include the corporal and spiritual acts of mercy (Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle 5,3,7-8).
The crucifix reveals how Jesus bridges the insurmountable chasm between our fallen world and heaven. Jesus hangs at the crux of the Cross, His Sacred Heart reveals that true Love is the union of love, truth, justice, and mercy. The horizontal beam of love and mercy, which by itself sinks into the miasma and quagmire of sin, must be joined to the vertical beam of truth and justice, which by itself is too steep to cling to for all but a few in salvation history. Only together are they lifted upright toward heaven, sanctified by Christ's death and resurrection to become the bridge of faith across the chasm of our fallen doom (Saint Catherine of Siena, Dialogue).
Good shepherds not only guide their peers and flock, but also, when needed, their shepherd where his faults harm his flock. The aforementioned Saint Catherine of Siena is one example, urging the pope back to Rome, among her many other upward shepherding actions. More common are the wives who aid their husbands to manfully grow into his vocational office to provide, protect, and discipline, or the parishioners who support their priest become a true pastor.
All faithful are called to obey the shepherd(s) entrusted with their care, obeying all asked of them, except where what is asked clearly contradicts God's will, even in the slightest. In such cases, the good sheep continue to obey in all else, honoring the office while seeking to correct in fraternal charity. This includes, when necessary, shepherding upward, enacting Matthew 18:15-17 including appeal to higher authority within the Church.
In conflict, the good shepherd encourages his flock to follow Matthew 18:15-17, and does so himself when his brother sins against him. If genuine reconciliation efforts fail, the good shepherd continues to pray for all involved and quietly, humbly, and diligently returns to the call entrusted to him by Christ.
Our sinner strives, in many forms, to make down seem up, wrong seem right, disorder appear normal. For example, one may be tempted to take on another's responsibilities while neglecting their own — sloth hiding as prudence. These distortions come in many flavors, all expressions of the seven deadly sins.
The heavenly virtues wage battle against the deadly sins, always defeating them when wielded with humble love. They offer a clear and simple lens to cut through the confusion and noise of sin and deception within the soul.
Where there is strife, there is sin. Strife due to nature, illness, or death reveals original sin, and sometimes personal sin. Strife in relationships always reveals personal sin. The good shepherd presumes the causal sin harming relationship is his own until proven otherwise, and even then, he examines how his sin may have contributed to or been inflamed by it. In shepherding others, he counsels those involved to do the same.
These rules are likely to agitate your sinner. Seek shepherding to aid you in this, and ensure you wield the salvation arts.
Some of the topics to be addressed in the full Rule of Shepherding include conservation of truth; soulscape and its geography; physics of the soul; biology of the soul; gender issues, including male and female breaths of God; marriage; parenting; science of shepherding; cultivating eyes of innocence.
If it isn't clear yet: it is all shepherding. Shepherd with love and abandon in Jesus our Christ!

Post Script

All that is contained in this quick reference is offered as truth, as received through the full revelation of Jesus our Christ — given in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, the Magisterium, and the witness of the Saints. Any error is mine alone.

As we strengthen and revitalize the practice of shepherding, these principles should be refined and added to while ensuring continuity, not usurpation, of truth entrusted to the Church.

#Catholic #Marriage #Halo #HumanEndeavor #Parenting #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

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