Fourth Sunday of Easter, Conversations with Consequences Podcast, April 29, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Vigil
April 29, 2023

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

The following text guided the brief 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 are his people, the sheep of his flock!” or with the more famous words of Psalm 23 that we’ll pray this Sunday, “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 the prayers I’ve been saying for decades is St. Ignatius of Loyola’s famous Suscipe, which he prayed, taught his Jesuits like Pope Francis to pray and which they have helped the whole world learn how to say, too. “Take, Lord,” we pray with St. Ignatius, “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 pitching, 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 Jesus gives us in the tenth Chapter of St. John, roughly a different of third of which we get each year, Jesus reveals how he seeks to shepherd us and 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. After calling his sheep by name, “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. They recognize his voice in the midst of the cacophony of worldly gurus competing for their attention and follow him rather than those competing voices.
  • 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 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 affirms. 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. They seek to come to grasp eternal life even now and eternal life is knowing him, the Good Shepherd, whom God the Father has sent.
• 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 see this in Jesus’ beautiful dialogue with Saint Peter after the Resurrection, when Jesus asks him three times whether Peter loves him, and after Peter’s affirmative response, replies, “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” Peter’s love for Jesus would be expressed in how he cares for and protects 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, especially priestly vocations. On this 60^th annual World Day of Prayer for Vocations, 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 help us all recognize our divine vocation, that the Good Shepherd is calling each of us to be saints, and to help us to discern how he’s intending us to do that, whether in marriage, the priesthood, religious life or other vocations in 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.
  • Priests feed Jesus’ flock with himself in the Holy Eucharist, but they also nourish us with his holy Word and the teaching of the Church.
  • Priests also seek to protect the flock of Christ from what Jesus calls in this Sunday’s Gospel “thieves and marauders,” 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.
  • Priests give their lives for Christ and his flock, giving up having wives and families of their own to serve Christ’s family, surrendering their earning potential to live in poverty or simplicity of love to show everywhere how to depend on God’s providence and where true wealth is that the world can’t give or rob, and forsaking their autonomy freely to obey him through their bishops and religious superiors just like the first apostles obeyed Christ. This is a form of daily martyrdom that culminates, sometimes, in actual martyrdom.
  • Priests also by their eschatological living point us ultimately to the eternal life that Christ desires to give us through them, the eternal life that begins in the baptism they administer and is meant to grow through coming to know Christ better here on earth into eternity.
• Jesus is the Good Shepherd who never leaves his flock untended. He continues to call, guide, feed, protect, give his life and lead us to life to the full through them. As we prepare to listen to the Good Shepherd’s voice speaking to us in this Sunday’s Gospel, we ask him to make us extremely grateful for the “table he has prepared for us” and for the priestly vocations 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 eternal sheepfold in the verdant pastures of heaven.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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