Fourth Sunday of Easter (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, April 20, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Vigil
April 20, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday.
• 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 first reveals about himself: “I am the Good Shepherd.” He discloses the way he seeks to relate to us. And that self-revelation leads to a disclosure about who we are: we are his people, the sheep of his flock. We respond with some of the most famous words God has ever inspired, saying, “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, with our being his beloved sheep, we truly have it all!
• But it’s key for us to believe and live by those famous words of Psalm 23. 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. 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 Jesus the Good Shepherd, risen from the death, as the pearl of great price. We confess that what Jesus provides, the relationship we have with him, is far more fundamental to happiness in this world, and absolutely essential to eternal felicity with him in the eternal sheepfold, than anything and everything else.
• Throughout the Good Shepherd discourse Jesus gives us in the tenth Chapter of St. John, roughly a different of 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, he knows us, calls each of us by name and leads us out. He knows us and his sheep know him. We are not a number, just one of a vast multitude. We are unique to him. He knows our story. He knows us like no other, our strengths and weaknesses. And we are called to know him in return, to live in relationship with him, to relate to him, for example, like Mary and the saints, like Mary Magdalene and so many reconciled sinners. And knowing us as he does, he calls us. He gives us a vocation. We hear his call and recognize his voice. And that call is not a one-time summons, rather, as our Shepherd he guides us always. We not only have to hear that call but need it — tofollow the Good Shepherd as he leads us sometimes down dark valleys, sometimes onto verdant pastures, and ultimately to the eternal fold. This is the first characteristic of him as our shepherd and ourselves as his sheep: the personal relationship he, risen from the dead, wants to have with each of us.
  • Second, as Good Shepherd, he lays down his life for us. “No one,” he says, “takes my life from me; I freely lay it down. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.” That’s what Jesus does in his passion, death and resurrection. And he does all of this because he loves us. He told us during the Last Supper, “No one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” That’s the type of love he has for us, freely and willingly giving his life so that we might live. He loves us so much that he will leave the 99 behind and comes after us! He does not want one to be lost and each of us is, he deems, worth risking and giving his life.
  • The third characteristic is that he gives us eternal life, he puts us securely in the Father’s strong hands, he protects us from thieves and marauders and promises that if we remain with him we shall never perish. He not only saves us from so many dangerous and difficult situations, including eternal perils, but wants to give us the greatest of all time, eternal life, through coming into communion with him who is the Resurrection and the Life.
• Jesus the Good Shepherd continues to befriend, call and guide us, to defend and lay down his life for us, and to save us and give us eternal life, but does it for the most part by calling some of his sheep and making them effective shepherds. He takes disciples and makes them apostles and guardians. He wants to do this with each of us. If we’re good sheep, then he wants us to become in our own circumstances a good shepherd of others, someone who helps Jesus feed, guide and protect others in his name. This is what is meant to happen in the lives of young people who become parents. This is what occurs when older brothers and sisters mature and care for their younger siblings. This is what occurs with godparents faithful to their responsibility. This is what is supposed to happen in every Christian as we look out at family members, friends, peers, colleagues, so many who are like sheep without a shepherd. If we’re good sheep of Jesus, he wants us to become, with him, good shepherds of others, leading them to come to know him and enter into relationship with him as the Good Shepherd with whom we want for nothing else. 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?” Three times Peter responded, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” and 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 — Jesus said, feed my lambs, tend my sheep — but they would be guided by a sheep like themselves whom Christ would choose, appoint, and help to be a shepherd after his own loving heart. And it’s obvious that St. Peter never forgot this lesson. Peter’s love for Jesus, as well as our love for Jesus, would be shown in how we love those whom Jesus loves. Jesus wants us to know them by name and lead them to him, to help them recognize his voice and follow him. He wants us to sacrifice ourselves for them so that they may become beneficiaries of Christ’s own sacrifice. Like Christ, we have the power to lay our time, our money, even our lives down, trusting in Jesus’ power to raise us up again. Jesus wants us to help others seize the eternal life he gives and protect them from the spiritual and earthly conmen who are all around us trying to preach a different Gospel and way of salvation than Jesus the Good Shepherd has given us. We all have that vocation as good sheep of the Good Shepherd to imitate his shepherdly care.
• But on Good Shepherd Sunday for the last 61 years, the Church has always marked the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, focusing especially on one group of disciples whom the Lord summons in a particular way to be shepherds in his image. 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 priest laborers, true shepherds, into the fields and among the flocks. 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 this Sunday’s Gospel “thieves and marauders,” those who would seek to harm them, those who would seek to profit from them, by metaphorically shearing them, milking them, killing and eating them. Having heard Jesus calling them by name, priests lay down their life for Jesus and for his flock, seeking to help them enter into a communion with Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, from which no one will be able to take them from the Father’s hand. On the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, we thank Jesus for the way that he has fed and tended us as his lambs 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 with the prayer, with the sacraments, with their charity, with their whole life in communion with the poor, chaste and obedient Christ. We pray in a particular way on Good Shepherd Sunday, in an age in which the Church and the world is yearning for real leadership, that God may hear our prayers and raise up many such shepherds from among the boys of our families and our parish families. It’s a day to pray to the Good Shepherd for all those who have already responded to his call, that they may think not of themselves and profit from the sheep, but of the sheep and offer themselves fully.
• Jesus is the Good Shepherd who never leaves his flock untended. He continues to feed, lead and protect us. He continues to nourish, guide and defend us, in a particular through the priests he makes pastors after his own heart. As we prepare to listen to the Good Shepherd’s voice speaking to us in the Gospel this Sunday, we ask him to make us ever more 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 speaking to us through the Church, so that we might know how to follow him, through his priests, all the way to the verdant pastures and sheepfold of heaven.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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