Following the Good Shepherd Who Gives Us Life to the Full, Fourth Sunday of Easter (A), May 3, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A
May 3, 2020
Acts 2:14.36-41, Ps 23, 1 Pet 2:20-25, Jn 10:1-10

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• The Fourth Sunday of Easter each year is called Good Shepherd Sunday, because on this day the Church focuses on the tenth Chapter of the Gospel of St. John in which Jesus reveals the relationship he has with each of his faithful followers. Jesus says about himself: “I am the Good Shepherd.” And we, his faithful followers, reply with the words of today’s Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd. I want, I lack, for nothing!” We mark this truth in the heart of the Easter Season each year, because it is the heart of our Easter joy: with the Risen Lord Jesus as our Shepherd, we truly have it all!
• But it’s key for us to believe and live by those famous words of the Responsorial Psalm. By them, we publicly confess as Catholics that our treasure is Jesus, that if we have him, but don’t have everything else in the world, we still recognize how rich we are. One of my favorite prayers is St. Ignatius of Loyola’s famous Suscipe: “Take, Lord and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will. All I have and call my own. Whatever I have or hold, you have given me. I return it all to you and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, which are enough for me and I ask for nothing more.” This prayer teaches us something very important about being a good sheep of the Good Shepherd: we recognize that Jesus’ love and grace are enough for us. In the midst of a consumerist society, in which we’re bombarded with advertisements that pretend that we’ll be happy only if we obtain what they’re selling, that we’ll be fulfilled only if we have money and houses, fame and fortune, power and position, we focus instead on the Good Shepherd’s love and grace. We confess that what Jesus provides is far more fundamental to happiness in this world and is absolutely essential to eternal felicity with him in the eternal sheepfold.
• Throughout the Good Shepherd discourse, a different third of which we get each year, Jesus reveals that he does for us essentially three things. For us to be good sheep of the Good Shepherd, we need to allow him to shepherd us in these three ways.
  • First, Jesus the Good Shepherd feeds his flock — He “prepares a table for us,” as we pray in today’s Psalm. Jesus feeds us in every way. He feeds us materially each day as he “gives us today our daily bread” (Mt 6:11). He feeds our souls with his word, for “not on bread alone does man live, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). He feeds us, ultimately, on his own body and blood in the Eucharist, the food of everlasting life. Good sheep are not only grateful for this three-fold nutrition, but hunger for it!
  • Second, Jesus the Good Shepherd guides his flock — Jesus “leads us in right paths for [his] names’ sake.” He leads us “besides the refreshing waters” of baptism. He guides us toward the “verdant pastures” of heaven. He says his sheep hear his voice and can distinguish it from the voice of strangers. He tells us he “calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. … He goes ahead of them and they follow him.” Jesus takes each of us personally to himself, but then he leads us on a journey, a true adventure, so that he may give us eternal life. “I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly,” he tells us today. That pilgrimage is what life is about. He doesn’t merely tell us about this life, he doesn’t just indicate to us where we need to go, but he leads us by example. To be his disciple means to follow where he leads. St. Peter talks about this in the second reading: “Christ left you an example, so that you should follow in his footsteps.” Our discipleship is following where he leads: to follow him to where he wishes to meet with us in prayer; to follow him as we seek to work with the virtues with which he worked in Nazareth; to follow him across the road as Good Samaritans; to follow him to the confessional where he forgives us; to follow him to the altar where he restores us. Good sheep try to follow wherever he leads.
  • Third, Jesus the Good Shepherd protects his flock — Jesus tells us very clearly that there are “thieves and marauders” who are seeking to fleece, milk, kill, cook and consume us. Against those who come “only to steal and kill and destroy,” Jesus sets himself as our protection, as the gate to the sheepfold so that, essentially, in order to get to us they first need to go through Him. To protect us, not only was he willing to die for us, but did in fact die for us. “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” he tells us later in his Good Shepherd Discourse. “No one takes my life from me. … I freely lay it down.” This is why we can act on his words, “Be not afraid!” because he himself will protect us from everything that can eternally harm us, provided that we stay in his fold. Thus we can say with trust and confidence, as we pray in today’s Psalm, “Even though I walk in the darkest valley — and some of us have been in that dark valley! — I fear no evil, for he is at my side, with his rod and his staff to comfort me.” Today, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we thank him for that protection and renew that trust.
• As Christians, however, it’s not enough for us merely to be good sheep of the Good Shepherd. By his shepherdly care, Jesus wants to transform us to such a degree that we can become good shepherds, and share in his feeding, guiding and protecting of others. We see this transformation in the vocation of St. Peter. After the Resurrection, when Jesus appeared to the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus asked Peter three times: “Simon, Son of John, do you love me more than these?” Jesus was querying whether Peter loved him more than anything and everything else, because the Lord wanted that love to be the distinctive mark of Peter’s life from that point forward. Three times Peter responded, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” After each response, Jesus gave him a commission, a task that would be the bedrock of all he would do in Jesus’ name. The first commission was, “Feed my lambs,” telling him in particular to take care of Christ’s young people. The second was “Tend my sheep,” which in the Greek means to guard and guide. The third was “Feed my sheep.” Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was entrusting the care and nourishment of his flock, young and old, to Peter’s loving solicitude. They would always remain Christ’s sheep — feed my lambs, tend my sheep, Jesus said — but they would be guided by a sheep like themselves whom Christ would choose, appoint, and help to be a shepherd after his own example. And it’s obvious that St. Peter never forgot this lesson, which he was putting into practice in today’s first reading, preaching to the crowds and feeding them with the Gospel.
• This same truth is depicted powerfully on the façade of incredibly beautiful Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls where St. Paul is buried. There we see Christ in the Center in two different images arranged vertically, an iconographic technique that means they should be interpreted together. One is him sitting on a throne with his right hand raised in blessing and in his left hand an open book, signifying the words he wants to speak to us. The words are, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” Underneath that is Jesus depicted as the Lamb looking as if he has been slain triumphant from the dead on the mountain of Calvary from which four rivers are flowing. And coming toward him on the mountain are twelve sheep, depicting the twelve apostles. They’re depicted first as sheep, as disciples of the Lord, whom the Lord then makes Shepherds, sending them out. Just as the Lord Jesus calls them to be missionary disciples so he calls each of us, by name.
• For the last 57 years, the Church has always celebrated on Good Shepherd Sunday the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, and especially priestly vocations. It’s on this day that we unite ourselves to the Pope and to Catholics all over the world in praying to God the Father, the Harvest Master, to send out laborers, shepherds after the heart of his Son, into the fields.
  • Priests are the Good Shepherd’s indispensable instruments to feed his flock with himself in the Holy Eucharist, but they also nourish us with his holy Word and the teaching of the Church.
  • Priests guide Jesus’ flock one-on-one in the ministry of mercy in the Confessional, in spiritual direction and counseling and guide the entire flock in their work as pastors, the Latin word for shepherd.
  • They also seek to protect the flock of Christ from what Jesus calls in today’s Gospel “thieves and marauders,” those who would seek to harm them. This involves a defense not just from the devil, his empty promises and evil works, but also all those earthly gurus who try to lead people from Jesus and the narrow path that leads to life.
• The priesthood is so important, because through it Jesus continues to shepherd us with love. On the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, we thank Jesus for the way that he has fed and tended us as his lamb and sheep throughout our life by those who love Christ enough to leave a family of their own, money and possessions, and their own will in order to serve us in chastity, poverty of spirit and obedience. We pray for the shepherds who have died, like Cardinal John O’Connor, whom the Good Shepherd summoned to follow him into eternity 20 years ago today. We pray for those priests who are in any type of difficulty due to Covid-19 or other causes. We pray that every priest, seminarian and young man who has received a vocation may respond to God’s graces to become truly holy shepherds after the Good Shepherd’s heart. And we pray that God may hear our prayers and raise up many such shepherds from among the boys of our families, our parishes and Diocese and throughout the world.
• Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will never leave his flock untended. He continues to feed, lead and protect us. He continues to nourish, guide and defend us through the priests he makes pastors after his own heart. After having listened to the Good Shepherd’s voice speaking to us in the Gospel, we ask him to make us extremely grateful for the “table he has prepared for us” and for the priesthood that uniquely makes this great banquet of life possible. And we ask him to make us ever more attentive to his voice as he says, “This is my Body,” “This is the chalice of my Blood,” giving his life for us and to us so that we might have life to the full, and be strengthened to follow him all the way to the verdant pastures of heaven.

The readings for today’s Mass were: