Freely Giving Our Lives Together with the Risen Good Shepherd, Fourth Sunday of Easter (B), April 25, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan
Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B
Memorial Mass for Aris and John Aroutiounian
April 25, 2021
Acts 4:8-12, Ps 118, 1 John 3:1-2, Jn 10:11-18

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 is called Good Shepherd Sunday because every year we focus on a part of the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel in which Jesus tells us, “I am the Good Shepherd” and then describes what he does for us, his beloved sheep: He knows us intimately and calls us by name, he leads and walks ahead of us, he protects us from thieves and marauders, he comes in search for us when we’re lost and brings us back, he lays down his life for us, and he gives us life to the full.

These words of Jesus were powerful when he preached them in the Temple area during the eight day Hanukkah celebrations several months before his death. But the Church has us read them in the heart, the midway point, of the Easter Season, because when looked at in the light of his Passion, Death and Resurrection, they take on much deeper meaning. They show us not only how to relate to Jesus risen from the dead, but also how to allow the power of his resurrection to transform us so that we might be able to love others as he has loved us first, in order that, being his faithful sheep who hear his voice calling us to follow him, we might in turn become shepherds to others after his own shepherdly heart. For us to live the Easter season well, for us to experience the fullness of our Christian vocation, we must enter into the metamorphosis Jesus seeks to bring about in our lives through his resurrection.

Many of us, when we reflect on the resurrection, think about it as a fact, an event, a mind-blowing occurrence that happened early on a Sunday within Joseph of Arimathea’s freshly hewn tomb outside the city gates in ancient Jerusalem. The resurrection is a fact. Alongside the fact of the Son of God’s entering humanity at the incarnation, it’s one of the two most important facts of all time. Yet for Jesus, the resurrection wasn’t so much a fact but a relationship. When Martha, four days after her brother Lazarus had died, told Jesus that if he had been present, Lazarus would still be alive, Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha replied, doubtless based on some of the conversations she had had with Jesus in her home in Bethany about what would happen after we die, replied with faith, “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” But then Jesus upgraded her — and our — understanding of the resurrection. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus was stressing that eternal life, as he said elsewhere, is to know Christ Jesus and the Father who sent him. It is a relationship that death cannot kill. When we know Jesus truly as a friend, as a Savior, as a Lord, as a Bridegroom, as a Good Shepherd, when we enter into communion with him, death is nothing other than a change of address, or more accurately, a change of state. As Jesus says in John 10, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” When we remain in the strong, loving, gloriously scarred hands of Jesus, when we stay in that loving covenant with him, he continues to embrace us into eternal life. That’s why St. Paul would exclaim in his Letter to the Romans, “I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities … nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).

And so the most important thing in life is to learn how to enter into relationship with him who is the resurrection and the life, to believe in him, to trust in him, to live in him.

It means to recognize, as we pondered in St. Peter’s words to the leaders and elders of the people in today’s first reading, that “Jesus Christ the Nazorean, whom you crucified, … God raised from the dead” and “there is no salvation through anyone else, nor any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

It means to become convinced, as we prayed through the Responsorial Psalm, that “it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes” and to say to the Lord, “I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me and have been my Savior!”

It means to enter into the astonishing truth St. John testifies to in today’s epistle, what Jesus has made possible for each of us when we enter into his death and resurrection in the sacred waters of Baptism: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us,” the apostle exclaims, “that we may be called children of God.” It would be the greatest privilege and honor of our life just to be called  God’s son or daughter. But St. John tells us, “Yet that is what we are!” And as if that is not enough, he adds, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. But we know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” All of this begins by entering into relationship with Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the Resurrection and the Life. He calls us by name and leads us into his own divine filiation, so that we might become sons and daughters in the Son, and, as St. Paul would say, “and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if one we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).

As we celebrate this Memorial Mass for Aris and John Aroutiounian, we give God thanks that each of them had entered deeply into relationship with Jesus. Each was able to say, in the words of the most famous Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall lack.” They believed that Jesus would lead them to green pastures and safe waters, restore their strength, guide them along the right path, walk with them through dark valleys into verdant pastures, anoint them, set a table before them, make their cup overflow, fill them with love and mercy all the days of their life and make it possible for them to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Each of them responded in life to Jesus’ question to Martha, “Do you believe this?,” with ““Yes, Lord! I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world,” and because of that faith in Jesus, believed in all Jesus affirmed. Aris and John believed that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. They staked their life on Jesus’ assurance that whoever believes in him, even if he dies will live, and everyone who lives and believes in him will never die. And we pray that that faithful, trusting relationship with Jesus as their Shepherd has now come to eternal fruition.

As important as it is, however, to believe in Christ as the Resurrection and the Life, to enter into relationship with him as good sheep of the Good Shepherd, Jesus wants something more. He wants to strengthen his sheep to become shepherds, to take disciples and make them apostles. He wants us who have been fed by him, guided by him, and protected by him, to feed, guide and protect others in this name. This is what is meant to happen in the lives of young people who become parents, like Aris and Rouzan lovingly cared for John from his conception. This is what occurs when older brothers and sisters mature and take responsibility for their young siblings. This is what takes place 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 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 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. Jesus wants us to get to know others, including strangers, by name and lead them to Christ, to help them recognize his voice and follow him. He wants us to sacrifice ourselves for them. He wants us to help them seize the eternal life he gives and protect them from the spiritual and earthly bandits who are all around us trying to preach a different Gospel and way of salvation than Jesus the Good Shepherd has given us. And he wants us to do so willingly.

One of the most powerful lines in the Gospel today is Jesus’ phrase, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I freely lay it down. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.” As our Good Shepherd, Jesus willingly gives his life to save ours. He uses the present tense, because he is in a perpetual state of self-giving. From his perspective, his crucifixion and death was not a passive victimization, but an active holocaust, the exclamation point of a life that began when he took on our humanity precisely to sacrifice it out of love so that we could share in his divinity.

To be a shepherd after his heart is to be willing to imitate, indeed to share in and extend, his self-giving love. In an age in which so many play the victim, Jesus wants us to be the courageous shepherd. He would say to us elsewhere that if someone strikes us on the right cheek, freely to offer him the left, that if someone wants to go to law with us over our tunic, freely to hand him our cloak as well, that if someone wants to press us into service for one mile, freely to go with him for two. He wants us to convert every situation, especially those in which we might be tempted according to human logic to resist defensively, into a circumstance of self-giving love.

We’re grateful that the two for whom we are praying at this Mass were people who responded to hardships with self-giving, indeed, with great self-giving. In his 25,859 days, Aris learned how to give his life for others. Despite the many difficulties flowing from the 1988 Armenian earthquake and the six-year Karabakh war, Dr. Aris Aroutiounian poured himself out like a Good Shepherd for his patients, mothers and children, as a standout ob-gyn in his hometown and then in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, developing techniques of extraperitoneal Cesarean Section that enabled him to save countless lives of moms and kids in complicated pregnancies. After meeting and marrying Dr. Rouzan Karabakhtsian, moving to the United States, and welcoming John into the world, Aris sacrificed the practice of medicine in order full-time to raise his son and to support Rouzan in her career and dreams. He would later pour out his immense knowledge and experience at an institute for cancer research, in the classroom at Hunter College, and eventually as a senior pathologist at Hackensack University Medical Center and the University of Kentucky in Lexington, training hundreds of pathology residents and fellows to diagnose and help those in need of medical care. His whole life, like that of good doctors, husbands and fathers, was one of continuous self-giving, laying down his life so that others may have life.

Similarly John, in the 9,506 days God blessed us with him on earth, distinguished himself as a good sheep listening to the Good Shepherd’s voice and following him wherever he led; and as a precociously young good shepherd not just of his peers and of his scores of friends, but to young people in need, providing counseling and suicide de-escalation services through the Trevor Project. He poured himself out as a young person to get the state of Kentucky to declare that what happened to the Armenians in Turkey at the end of World War I was indeed a genocide, something echoed just yesterday by President Biden. He poured himself out as a writer and debator, trying to engage others in an honest examination of the truth. He poured himself into his studies, especially at law school, so that he would be equipped, as a good shepherd, to defend those whose human rights were being trampled. He poured himself into his friendships, writing in his application to become a Leonine Fellow (where I first met him), “It is a paradox of history that our interconnected age features so much social decomposition and personal fragmentation. It is a prime moment for the Church to act as ‘salt, light, and leaven’ in emphasizing the transcendent meaning of human dignity across the world, in shining a light on those forgotten in a society that worships power and ability above all, and in breaking through polarized discourse to reorient our politics toward the pursuit of true human flourishing. But this can only be achieved by prayerful individuals, guided by the Holy Spirit, laboring each day in solidarity with one another.” That’s the type of person he strove to be, prayerful, Spirit-driven, laboring to bring people together into friendship with God and with each other. John also poured himself out courageously in his suffering, making the choice to suffer quietly, without a lot of attention, because a self-giver never wants the spotlight on himself, but on others. And finally he poured himself out in his relationship with God, never seeking to the do the minimum, but trying to love God with all the mind, heart, soul and strength God gave him, telling a friend soon before God would call him to himself, that to worship God was the most human thing we can do, because to be in God’s presence fulfills the deepest desires of our humanity.

Neither Aris nor John allowed his life to be “taken from” him. Both spent the years God gave them freely and willingly laying down their lives for others, in imitation of, and in communion with, the Good Shepherd. We thank the Lord today for having blessed us through them. And we ask for the grace to follow them as good sheep and good shepherds, caring and tending for Christ’s sheep and lambs.

I want to finish with one last point, as we reflect on Jesus as our Resurrection and Life and seek to be reunited one day, by God’s mercy, with John and Aris in Christ’s eternal sheepfold. Just like Jesus didn’t allow his life to be taken from him but freely gave it, just like Aris and John strived to pour themselves out for others, so the Lord wants us, like them, to be self-givers not just in life but in death.

A decade ago, as he was preparing to retire as Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali sent a powerful letter to his priests on preparation for death. It was all based on two related passages: Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel about no one taking his life from him but freely laying it down and Jesus’ last words from the Cross, giving or commending his spirit to God the Father. Cardinal Rigali stressed that Jesus’ whole life could be summarized by Jesus’ daily, hourly, perpetual entrusting of himself to the Father as he gave himself for us. And he encouraged us to receive from Jesus this same extraordinary power to commend our life to the Father and lovingly lay down our life for others.

He wrote, “Death is part of our lives. Preparing for death is the greatest opportunity in our lives! We have the possibility to rehearse our death, not in its minute details—although saints have found this useful—but in the sense of accepting it in anticipation by an act of our will that will be consummated freely at the moment of our death and offered to the Father in union with the death of Jesus. We can indeed accept and anticipate by an act of our will the laying down of our life in union with Jesus! … Seen in this perspective, death is the moment to give all, to surrender all with Jesus and in union with His sacrifice. All of this can be anticipated by an act of our will, by an act of our love. When anticipated by an act of loving acceptance, death is an opportunity to say yes to the Father, just as Jesus did; to say yes with all our heart, as Jesus did.”

“For us Christians,” he continued, “death is the final renewal of our baptismal profession. It is our final offering united to the Eucharist. It is the hour—especially when it is anticipated by many acts of the will—to assemble, and through Jesus to offer to the Father, all the acts of generosity in our lifetime, every yes that followed our call from the Lord and was ever expressed in our Christian life, every act of penance, every act of love that was ever manifested at any time in our youth, in our vocation, in our ecclesial mission!” To prepare for death in this way is to “accept to follow Jesus to the cross and we accept all the unknown details of a death that awaits us. We willingly ratify in advance everything in an act of love. … It can be a special moment renewed thousands of times. It is a special step to holiness. It is a special grace of sharing in Christ’s risen life. … It is the expression of total openness on our part to let the Paschal Mystery of Jesus possess us in the embrace of all-consuming love.”

“When the hour of death comes,” he finished, “we may not be conscious. It may come very suddenly, by reason of an accident, by reason of a heart attack; there are a million and one possibilities left to our imagination but this does not matter. The point is: the surrender will have been made thousands of times! The Father will understand that each of us had the power, which we exercised, the power, with His Son Jesus, to lay down our life freely, lovingly and definitively. Then there will be no obstacle to the consummation of our love. Life and holiness will be ours forever in the communion of the Most Blessed Trinity.”

Today, Jesus the Good Shepherd who freely laid down his life for us, who knows us intimately and calls us by name, who guides us along the right path and walks ahead of us even in dark valleys, who protects us, who searches for us, who grips us lovingly in his hands, prepares a banquet for us here, one that is meant to be a foretaste of the eternal banquet in the Lord’s house where we hope to dwell forever. He who willingly gave his life for us on Calvary here gives himself anew, saying, “This is my body given for you” and “This is the chalice of my blood poured for out for you.” And entering into communion he wants to transform us so that we might do this in his memory, laying down our lives, giving our body and blood for God’s glory and for others’ good. We pray that John and Aris have now experienced the fullness of life that Jesus promised for all those who believe and live in him and pray that each of us, through a life of holy, daily, self-giving, might come to experience the same, as we, as God’s beloved children, await with faith and hope the revelation of what we shall be when we, who are truly God’s children, shall become like God for we shall see him as he is!”

This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. How proud we are to profess it in Christ Jesus, Our Lord. Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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