When I first found out that Psalm 23/Jesus as the Good Shepherd would be the theme for Blessed is She’s Advent devotional this year, I could not believe how God providentially aligned it to my personal spiritual life. For starters, the upcoming liturgical year for the Sunday Mass Readings is going to be Year B (which I love so much that I mention it in my Blessed Is She bio) and on top of that, Psalm 23 is the Bible passage that got me through college and continues to be a tangible reminder of how much God loves me. I am finding that there are always new things that God wants to reveal to us, even through prayers and passages that we have been praying with for a long time.
Freshman Year of College
On September 29, 2017, I was an eighteen-year-old freshman on a retreat and in the confessional desperately searching for comfort. My parents had decided that they were getting a divorce the same month they shipped me off to college in Austin, Texas. And I had no one to support me. At this point, I had been in college for only a month and had spent it crying myself to sleep, eating one meal a day, and going straight home after I attended my classes because I did not have the energy to go out and make friends. It was the lowest point of my life. I was hesitant to go to Confession during this retreat because I knew that if I went, I would not be able to stop crying. I decided to go anyway. I sat across from the priest and told him about my anger, frustration, and hurt from the past month. After I finished talking, he looked at me tenderly and said, “I need you to know that God loves you and He won’t leave you.” Then as my penance he told me to pray with Psalm 23.
For some reason, I didn’t complete my penance until October 26, 2017 (please have mercy for eighteen-year-old-me—I meant well but was struggling). I was feeling extra low this day so I decided it would be a good time to read Psalm 23. After the first line, “The Lord is my Shepherd; there is nothing I lack,” I had to stop, recollect myself, and let Jesus ache with me as I internalized that I was already enough.
Sophomore Year of College
The beautiful part about experiencing the Cross and deep pain is that it makes the mountaintop that much sweeter. The start of my sophomore year of college hit differently from my freshman year. I had a feeling that this year would be something I would talk about for a long time. Sure enough, I was right.
During the fall semester, I ended up on the music staff for a Longhorn Awakening retreat, and during rehearsal, our staff head introduced this upbeat and ~hip~ rendition of Psalm 23 entitled, “Good Shepherd” by Brother Isaiah. At this point, I was at the happiest I ever was in college, and I think it’s so sweet how even though the Lord knew I was okay, He made sure that I knew He was still there for me.
During that semester, on another Longhorn Awakening retreat, my friend gave a talk and he brought up Psalm 23. He talked about how Jesus leads us to green pastures and away from the valley of the shadow of death so that He can make us into who we are meant to be.
The spring semester of that year was a tough one. I struggled with grief. I didn’t know how to communicate my sadness. I didn’t want to bring my friends down with me and I didn’t let Jesus in enough to heal me. As a result, I was quick to say hurtful things to people who loved me very much. I couldn’t enjoy even the good things that happened to me because of what I was carrying. And while I knew that I wasn’t alone, I didn’t want to invite Jesus into my brokenness. Despite my attempts to block God’s grace, this happened to be the semester that I started going to daily Mass regularly.
Though that semester was difficult, Good Shepherd Sunday weekend was a gentle reminder of the life and community that God had helped me to create for myself in college. I spent it surrounded by the friends I had met and grown close to in the past school year. On the actual day of Good Shepherd Sunday, the upperclassmen threw a joyous gathering to celebrate those who would be graduating that year as well as the Lord as our Good Shepherd! I came home joyful and content with how this weekend played out, knowing that every moment was intentionally curated by the Lord. He knows what will bring joy to us, no matter how sorrowful our semester (or life) has been.
Junior Year of College
After my freshman year of college, I turned my back on prayer. So, my junior year was the second school year in a row that I did not have a daily prayer life. I never stopped going to Mass, but my college self did not see a point in talking to the Lord because it did not feel like He was doing anything to change my circumstances or take my pain away (I would later on learn how wrong I was to run away from Him for so long).
Before my first Sunday Mass back in Austin for the spring semester of my junior year, I was feeling very low, so I decided to give prayer another try and journaled my pre-Mass thoughts and what do you know . . . one of the Communion hymns was, “Shepherd Me, O God.” It was God’s way of telling me that no matter what I was currently facing or about to face (this semester was full of pain), He would get me through it.
He would later keep His promises. The pandemic cut my junior year short in early 2020. I was stuck at home with my family and completely heartbroken at losing my college experience and not being able to say good-bye to my friends. Furthermore, I was putting my self-worth in whether or not a certain boy wanted to be with me. One Sunday in particular, I did not want to attend virtual Mass because I could barely get out of bed, but I did anyway and the Communion hymn again was, “Shepherd Me, O God.” Even though I was at my lowest, I felt comforted. It was as if God came down from Heaven just to give His weak child a hug.
Senior Year of College
During the fall semester of my senior year of college, I thought I could find comfort in keeping busy and not face the deep sadness I had over losing the in-person aspect of my fall semester, since all of my classes were online. I worked, busied myself with my organizations, tried to find internships for Spring 2021 and a full-time job, and focused on school. That all came crashing down mid-November. At this point, I had been rejected from an entertainment internship, bombed a business law exam after studying relentlessly for a week, felt emotionally distant from friends, and kept getting rejected from full-time jobs. Nothing had gone well for me at all that semester. Not my job search. Not my academics. Not my internship search. Nothing. I see now that I was left with nothing because I needed to realize that the things of the world are empty and that trying to place my worth in my achievements, accomplishments, and what I do is not what will give me Eternal Life or true happiness.
After crying my eyes out for a week, the Responsorial Psalm at a Mass I attended was Psalm 23 and the homily was about how we should expect delays. The priest explained that Jesus intentionally delays some of the things we want to happen in our lives because He is testing our reaction to the unplanned. This Mass gave me the final push to get through the last three weeks of the semester, and the Lord knew that the Psalm 23, reminding me of Jesus as my Good Shepherd, was what would give me that burst of energy and zeal.
To celebrate the end of the semester, I went over to my friend’s apartment (he is not Catholic nor does he practice any type of faith) and I found a book of Psalms on his coffee table. As I flipped through the pages to get to Psalm 23, he walked over to me and said, “I really like the one about the shadow of the valley of death.” And I just knew that the Lord was telling me that even if 2020 went horribly, I had Him the entire year to hold my hand through it all.
I returned to Austin for my last semester of college in the spring and attended the SEEK conference for the first time. On our only full day of SEEK, the Responsorial Psalm at Mass again was Psalm 23 which led to the homily exclusively focusing on this image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. I sat there, half-asleep, cuddling with my monogrammed blanket, and I smiled. There was no other place I would rather be, at that moment, than listening to the Word of God, knowing I was going to receive the Eucharist in a few minutes and sitting next to my best friend in our final semester.
This was a semester of the sweetest reunions, including finally seeing my friend Daisy after thirteen months. She was the girl who sat next to me at my retreat during my first semester of college and was my first college close friend. As we sat and caught up, I told her about how much Psalm 23 meant to me and my college experience, and she said that it was also one of her favorite passages and that it was on her high school letterman. How endearing it was to know that the person I sat next to for most of that freshman year retreat, when I first attentively heard this passage, also loved it as much as I did.
On Good Shepherd Sunday that year, the priest talked about how sometimes, the Lord sends us human shepherds to be a more tangible example of what He wants to say to us. I love the concept that God likes to send people in our lives to aid in our healing. I thought about my college Bible study leader who kept inviting me to Bible study even though I turned her down many times, my friend Jolyssa who invited me to go pray a Holy Hour with her every single day of Lent 2019 (I said no every time), the countless people who told me to go to Eucharistic Adoration to let God help me, and the providential advice I got during a Sunday in Advent during my sophomore year of college from a person I just met that night.
When I graduated college, I looked back on this imagery of Jesus as my Good Shepherd, seeing that without Him, I would not have been able to get through the hardest years of my life. At moments when I felt all alone, I was not. He was there the entire time.
Post-College Life
One of the worst years of my life (right up there with 2017 and 2020) was 2022. I knew I had been needing to go to therapy but for one reason or another, I kept putting it off. At this point, five years of trauma, pain, and wounds had amassed and I knew it was finally time to get help.
That same year, I was also invited to join a Bible study with girls who also had divorced parents. I love all of the friends I have, but the ones with married parents and complete families could never quite understand the hurt and the pain that came from the dissolution of my parents’ marriage. This Bible study pointed me to Life-Giving Wounds, a ministry for adult children of divorced parents, and for once in my life, I was no longer alone in this wound (from a human standpoint). My first day of therapy was the same day as the first Life-Giving Wounds Retreat, September 29, 2022: the exact date, five years later, from when the priest introduced me to Psalm 23. In that first Life-Giving Wounds meeting, the speaker mentioned praying with the Psalms. Funny how God works, huh?
Flash forward almost a year later: on my twenty-fourth birthday, my best friend gave me an image of the Eucharist. Included in the package was a randomly selected prayer card. Turns out it was a Psalm 23/Good Shepherd prayer card. A good omen for this year of my life? We will just have to see. I cried as I opened her gift for me.
Finally, I went to Mass on the Feast Day of Saint Thérèse with my best friend and other people we love. I was reuniting with my friend, Felipe, who had been away at seminary in another country. I sat there, on the same exact weekend, but six years later, as the first time Psalm 23 was presented to me (September 29 - October 1), surrounded by people I love, with the Gospel Acclamation of the Alleluia verse being: “My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them and they follow me.” I prayed with this imagery of unity in the Eucharist as all of my friends and I stared at the Eucharist here on Earth, while knowing that the union I was seeing with my visible eyes does not compare to the unity we will experience in Heaven with our Good Shepherd.
As we gear up for Advent, I am excited to see what else the Lord will reveal to me through Psalm 23 and the image of Him as my Good Shepherd. I know that I will forever belong to Him as His sheep and that there is nothing that you or I can do to stop the love of the Good Shepherd from reaching out and seeking our consent to transform our hearts.
Order Found: An Advent Devotional here.
HIS WORD CHANGES LIVES
God is speaking to you through His Word. In this personal study, you will learn to hear God's voice by reading slowly and praying deeply.
Patricia Valderrama hails from the big state of Texas with a degree in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (hook 'em horns). When she was a freshman in college, she started her own personal blog, All Things Patricia. It has since grown as a way for her to connect with others and share the Catholic faith from the perspective of a college student and now a young professional. She often calls herself the "biggest liturgical year B fan" and when she's not working, she's planning her next trip. She credits the friendships she made in college as the anchor for her growing deeper in her faith, especially their emphasis on the Holy Hour/Eucharistic Adoration.
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