Fourth Sunday of Easter (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, April 24, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (B), Vigil
April 24, 2021

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 says about himself: “I am the Good Shepherd.” And we, his faithful followers, with the some of the most famous words God has ever inspired, respond, “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 most famous 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. 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 is far more fundamental to happiness in this world, and is 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:
  • He calls each of us by name and leads us out. He gives us a vocation. We hear and recognize his voice. He guides us and we follow him.
  • 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. He loves us enough that he freely dies so that we may leave. He leaves the 99 behind and comes after us! What an incredible Good Shepherd we have!
  • He gives us eternal life, puts us in the Father’s strong hands, protects us from thieves and marauders and promises that if we remain with him we shall never perish.
• Jesus continues to call us, lay down his life for 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 this 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. This is what occurs with godparents faithful to their responsibility. This is what is supposed to occur in every Christian as we look at family members, friends, peers, colleagues. If we’re good sheep of Jesus, he wants us to become, with him, good shepherds 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 mylambs, tend mysheep, 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 loving heart. And it’s obvious that St. Peter never forgot this lesson. Peter’s love for Jesus, and our love for Jesus, would be shown in how we love those whom Jesus loves. He wants us to know them by name and lead them to Christ, to help them recognize his voice and follow him. He wants us to sacrifice ourselves for them. We have the power to lay it down and we trust in Jesus’ power to raise us up again. He wants us to help them 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.
• For the last 58 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 feedhis flock with himself in the Holy Eucharist, but they also nourish us with his holy Word and the teaching of the Church. Priests guideJesus’ 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 protectthe flock of Christ from what Jesus calls in today’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 loves for Jesus and for his flock, seeking to help them enter into communion with Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, in such a way that they will, through the Church, enter into eternal life in a secure way that 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 in chastity, poverty of spirit and obedience. We pray in a particular way that God may hear our prayers and raise up many such shepherds from among the boys of our families and our parish families.
• 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. As we prepare to listen 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 speaking to us through the Church, so that we might know how to follow him, through his popes and priests, all the way to the verdant pastures and sheepfold of heaven.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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