Fourth Sunday of Easter (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, May 7, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, C, Vigil
May 7, 2022

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 a part of the tenth Chapter of St. John’s Gospel in which Jesus reveals the relationship he has with each of his faithful followers. Jesus says about himself: “I am the Good Shepherd,” and indicates how he shepherds us. His faithful followers respond to him, with the words of Psalm 100 we’ll hear this Sunday, “We are his people, the sheep of his flock!” or with the more famous words of Psalm 23, “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!
• Throughout the Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus shows us how he seeks to relate to us.
  • First, “he calls his own sheep by name” and the sheep hear and recognize his voice. He wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. He knows us. He cares about us. Good sheep of the Good Shepherd enter into this mind-blowing I-thou relationship with him, responding to his call and calling out to him by name in return.
  • Second, he guides or leads us. He tells us he “calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. … He goes ahead of them and they follow him.” “He “leads us in right paths for [his] names’ sake.” He takes us “besides the refreshing waters” of baptism and toward the “verdant pastures” of heaven. He wants to lead us on a journey, a true adventure, a life-time pilgrimage. He who is the way doesn’t merely point that path out but accompanies us along it. Good sheep follow the Good Shepherd’s guidance and walk in his ways.
  • Third, he feeds us. He “prepares a table for us,” seeking to feed us in every way he knows we need. He feeds us materially 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!
  • Fourth, he protects us. 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 protector, as the gate to the sheepfold so that, essentially, in order to get to us they first need to go through Him. He leaves the 99 behind and comes after us when we’re in danger. “No one can take them out of my hand,” he says. Good Sheep of the Good Shepherd stay in those powerful, saving, protective hands.
  • Fifth, he freely gives his life for us. “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” he tells us. “No one takes my life from me. … I freely lay it down.” His protection goes so far as to die so that we might live. This is why we can act on his words, “Be not afraid!” That’s why Psalm 23 exclaims, “Even though I walk in the darkest valley I fear no evil, for he is at my side, with his rod and his staff to comfort me.”
  • Lastly, he says, “I give them eternal life.” He seeks to lead us to the eternal sheepfold, the verdant pastures where he has set a table before us and desires to give us everlasting repose. Good sheep of the Good Shepherd have a deep hunger for heaven, to be with the Good Shepherd and his other sheep forever.
• So Jesus the Good Shepherd wants to enter into a lifelong existential dialogue with each of us, as he calls, leads, feeds, protects, and gives his life for us so that we might have eternal life. And in so doing he seeks to transform his good sheep into Good Shepherds of others, who care for others personally, who call them for God, who guide them in his paths, who nourish them, protect them, even give their life for them so that they might come to know Jesus and receive from him the gift of eternal life and love. We saw this last week in Jesus’ beautiful dialogue with Saint Simon Peter when, after Jesus asked him three times whether Peter loved him, he replied, “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” Peter’s love for Jesus would be expressed in how he cared for and protected the Good Shepherd’s beloved sheep. One application of good sheep becoming good shepherds is meant to be the priesthood, which is why every year since 1963, the Church has celebrated on Good Shepherd Sunday the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, so that priests and bishops may indeed be shepherds after the Good Shepherd’s heart.
• But another application quite timely for this Sunday is the shepherdly love of mothers. On Mother’s Day we pray for our mothers living and deceased, give thanks to God for them, and give thanks to them directly for all of the ways that they have loved us through the years. The work of mothers is an extension of Jesus’ shepherding.
  • Moms care for their children with personal love, giving and calling them by name, helping them to grow in their personal identity as someone loved and cherished.
  • Moms feedtheir children, through the umbilical cord during the most vulnerable stage of human existence, with food from their own bodies after birth, and then thereafter with so many thousands of meals lovingly prepared. They also feed their children through breast-feeding them with the faith, nourishing their kids by means of their own faith, carefully digested and given to them in ways the children can consume.
  • Mothers also guidetheir children along the moral path. They are the first ones to teach their children to pray, to know the difference between right and wrong, to help their children learn how to discern Jesus’ voice calling them to follow him.
  • Moms protecttheir children. They protect them in the womb. They protect them from bad influences. They protect them even from truths that the children are not fully ready to handle.
  • Moms give their lives for their children, sacrificing their own personal pursuits so often to help their children succeed. Even the most petite moms become Mamma Bears when their children’s lives are at stake.
  • Moms’ love for children extends into eternity, as they seek to help their kids recognize they’re sons and daughters of the eternal Father called to live together in the family of God.
• Today we praise mothers for all these ways in which they love with the love of the Good Shepherd. Their witness to shepherdly, maternal love is needed now more than ever. We’re living in an age in which our culture so often denigrates motherhood by those who tragically pretend that female fulfillment must involve the ability to flee from motherhood through avoiding maternity through the use of contraception or, more notoriously, if they’ve conceived a child and already become a mom, through the practice of abortion, which transforms doctors into wolves and mothers into those who allow those wolves to attack the precious lambs growing with them. Jesus in the Good Shepherd discourse says that he has come “so that they may have life and have it to the full.” Good Shepherds nourish and protect this life and all of us in the Church, men and women, young and old, have a duty to defend life in the womb and to care for, feed, guide, protect and sacrifice for women in vulnerable stages of their life, especially in pregnancy, from the thieves and marauders, both human and diabolical, who will urge them to destroy rather than nourish and cherish the life they’ve conceived. Earlier this week was leaked the draft opinion of the Dobbs decision, which, if followed through upon, would overturn finally Roe v. Wade and the regime that made abortion legal in every state in every stage of pregnancy. It would be a huge step forward, for which we continue to pray. But at the same time, it would be a huge challenge for us to ensure that women in vulnerable situations tempted to take the life of their child growing within know that they have the resources necessary in order to choose life. On this Good Shepherd Sunday, Jesus wants to help all mothers in their sweet but challenging vocation to be Good Shepherds for their children, and to help all of us protect not only mothers and future mothers, but also the beauty and gift of motherhood in a culture in which many marauders are trying to rob us of this appreciation.
• Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will never leave his flock untended. He continues to care for, feed, lead, protect, and lay down his life for us so that we may have lift to the full. As we prepare to listen to the Good Shepherd’s voice speaking to us this Sunday, we ask him to make us grateful for the “table he has prepared for us,” for the priesthood that uniquely makes this great banquet of life possible, and for the mothers and grandmothers who love us according to his shepherdly heart. God bless you all.

The Gospel on which today’s homily was based was: 

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