How the Good Shepherd Leads Us to Life to the Full, 4th Monday of Easter, April 23, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Memorial of Saints George and Adalbert, Martyrs
April 23, 2018
Acts 11:1-18, Ps 42, Jn 10:1-18

To listen to this morning’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• The mystagogical catechesis of the Easter Season commences with the apparitions of the Risen Lord to convince us anew of the fact of his Resurrection and how he seeks to have us seek the things that are above and live a new life. Then we have a four-day catechesis on the Sacrament of Baptism followed by an eight-day catechesis on the Eucharist. With Good Shepherd Sunday at the beginning of the Fourth Week, we begin to focus on various images and realities by which the Lord Jesus wishes to relate to us and bring us fully alive. Today everything is summarized in the passage, “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” Jesus wishes us to overflow with his risen zoe (supernatural life in contrast to “bios” or biological/natural life). At the end of today’s first reading, the Church grasped that God wanted his “life-giving repentance” to be preached and offered to all the nations. To the extent that we haven’t lived with Jesus’ life, in which we haven’t related to him as good sheep to Good Shepherd, he wishes now to give us that life-giving repentance so that we might have his risen life in us more abundantly.
• In today’s Gospel, in which I combined the first two sections of St. John’s tenth chapter concerning Jesus’ Good Shepherd Discourse so that we don’t miss any of it — the Church has us normally choose between the two, depending upon what we hear on Good Shepherd Sunday — we see how Jesus shepherds us to give us life in the following five ways:
  • First he calls us by name — None of us is a number to him. He knows us by name and calls us each individually. We’re special to him.
  • Second, he leads and guides us — He doesn’t call us and leave us on our own, but he constantly calls us to be with him. He goes before us so that he can turn to us and say “follow me.” Because he knows us individually, he knows that we need direction and he constantly gives that personal direction.
  • Third, he feeds us — In the most famous Psalm, which is all about how God shepherds us, we proclaim that with him, we lack nothing, but have it all. He leads us  into green pastures to have us graze. He guides us to restful waters to refresh us. He sets a table before us and makes our cup overflow. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus looked on the crowd because they were “like sheep without a shepherd,” on one occasion he worked the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish and on other occasion he began to teach, knowing that people were hungering for nourishment for their souls as well. As our shepherd, Jesus always remembers to give us each day our daily bread, both material and spiritual.
  • Fourth, he protects us — The ancient shepherds used to risk it all to protect their sheep against savage animals like wolves but also against bandits who would come to steal them. Jesus came into our world courageously to do the same for us. When we get lost wandering away from the fold, he leaves everyone else to come to find us and rescue us when we’re in danger.
  • Finally, he loves us enough to die for us — Jesus says three times in today’s Gospel passage that he lays down, and lays down freely, his life for his sheep. I’ve always considered it crazy for a human being to die for an animal. It’s silly for us to die for our hamsters or parakeets or even for our pet canines and felines. But shepherds actually would die protecting their flocks from wolves, or lions, or evil bandits. The distance between human beings and animals, however, is nothing compared to the gap between God and us his creatures, and yet that’s precisely what God does. And he does so because he loves us.
• These are all characteristics of how the risen Lord Jesus wants to relate to us as our shepherd. Our first task is to respond to his shepherding in each of these five ways.
  • To respond to his call and singular involvement involvement in our life, to recognize that we’re special to him and summons us to a special bond with him and share in his saving mission. He says that his sheep hear his voice and don’t recognize the voice of a stranger. Yet one of the problems we face is that of discernment, because, after the Fall, we can’t always readily recognize his voice, and so we seek to attune our listening, with the help of others, to his constant calling. Each of us is called!
  • To follow him with docility and alacrity, knowing that we need his guidance and that he is constantly providing it. Our Christian life is not static, but dynamic. Jesus is always leading us out and he wants us following him. He’s leading us on a pilgrimage all the days of our life. Occasionally he will guide us through dark valleys with his rod and staff and we follow him there, too, as he gives us confidence to be with him even on the way of the Cross that is the path to glory.
  • To hunger for what he gives us, derive our nutrition from what he provides, and be grateful. It’s important for us to allow God to provide for us. That’s what God helped St. Peter to see in today’s first reading when God pronounced clean all food he had created. That’s key to spiritual childhood, that we recognize we need him. This hunger is important physically but even more important spiritually, and God seeks to feed our solves even more lavishly than he feeds our bodies, because for our souls, he gives us himself as nutrition.
  • Not to run away from his protection to get his attention, but to stay close to his strong arm. That’s what gives us great confidence and happiness. There’s a beautiful part of today’s Gospel that says that the sheep “come in and go out and find pasture.” Those verbs point to the fact that they’re secure enough, under the protection of the Shepherd, to wander about, without being paranoid about the wolves or thieves.
  • To receive the fruits of laying down his life for us. Jesus gave his life, as he tells us today, so that we might have life and have it to the full. The way we receive this gift is by coming alive, by seizing that gift of abundant life, which is not bios (biological life), but zoe (supernatural life). We don’t want Jesus’ gift of life to be wasted, but to invest it so that we may have more and more a share of his life, by entering into his life.
• When we begin to share in Jesus’ life to the full, when we become Jesus’ good sheep listening to him, following him, consuming what he gives, staying under his protection and receiving his life to the full, Jesus helps us to make the transition from being good sheep to becoming good shepherds so that others through us may come to life to the full. This transformation is one of the most frequently depicted images in ancient Christian art. Two weeks ago I was in Rome where Pope Francis called the 895 priests whom he has appointed Missionaries of Mercy across the world to meet with him and be strengthened in our task of preaching about God’s mercy and sharing it, with the Pope’s own faculties, in the Sacrament of Confession. On Monday and Wednesday, we had lectures at the Pope’s university, next to his Cathedral of St. John in the Lateran, where I did my studies at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. In the University’s beautiful new Aula Magna, made nine years ago, there was an incredible, huge mosaic above the dais of Jesus Christ the Teacher, seated as ancient teachers always were as students stood and learned, with his right hand raised as ancient professors and orators would do to call attention when they were about to speak, with a sealed book in his left hand ready to open up to us the mysteries. Above was a phrase in Latin, “Magister Vester Unus Est Christus,” “Christ alone is your teacher,” and underneath which were twelve sheep looking toward Christ on the throne. If you go to St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome you’ll see the similar twelve sheep on the mosaic of the façade. If you go to San Clemente, you’ll see them again. Why twelve? Why sheep? Because it was meant to show the twelve apostles’ relationship to Christ the Good Shepherd. Before Jesus could ever send them out to fulfill his mission caring for his sheep and lambs, they first needed to come to Him Good Shepherd. They needed to be good sheep before they could be good shepherds. They needed to be holy disciples before they could be ardent apostles. But Jesus intends for them — and us — to be both. That’s the transformation he seeks to do in us by his shpeherdly care. Then we become capable of being his instruments in order to:
  • Call others individually by name — Everyone is precious to God and we need to treat them as precious. That’s what you do in helping every pregnant mother and seeking to help her to recognize that the child growing in her womb is likewise precious. It’s also one of the reasons why I have sought to learn every Sister of Life’s name, because you’re not just another Sister of Life, but special to God and special to every priest who wants to imitate the Pastor Bonus in becoming a good pastor. Names are how we relate to each other on a personal level, and if God calls us by name, we’re called to relate to others by name as well.
  • Set for them good example to lead them in the Master’s ways — The Lord seeks to use to guide people to him and after him to abundant life. The greatest way we can pass on the gift of faith is by showing others the faith rather than just verbally teaching it, and particularly by showing how beautiful the life of the faith is.
  • Feeding them with material and spiritually nourishment — Before Jesus worked the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish having looked upon the crowd that was like sheep without a shepherd, he told his apostles, “You give them something to eat.” He asked for the five loaves and two fish they had. So he wants us to share in his shepherdly care for others, feeding them materially and spiritually. So many parents do this naturally, but Jesus wants us all to do this.
  • Protecting them from wolves, thieves, and marauders — Jesus wants us, like him, to be good shepherd’s protecting others from harm. He contrasts himself from the “merchants” who run away when beasts or bandits arrive to harm the flock, putting their self-preservation over the protection of others. Jesus calls us to another form of life. For you, sisters, there are times in which you’re spiritual maternity will take the form of becoming Mamma Bears protecting your cubs. This is what Jesus will help you to become.
  • Loving them to the extreme — St. John writes in his first letter, “The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). In forming us to be Good Shepherds, Jesus is helping us to be courageous, to lay down our lives for others in little ways or even by the supreme sacrifice. This is what a Good Shepherd does. This is what fathers and mothers worthy of the name do for their children. This is what the martyrs Saint George and Saint Adalbert, whom we celebrate today, both did. This is what Jesus is calling us to do for all our brothers and sisters. When we’re willing to die for others, then loving them is so much easier. And like Jesus we’re called to say, “No one takes my life from me. I fully lay it down!”
• Just as the risen Good Shepherd shepherded Peter, and Adalbert, and George, he seeks to shepherd us. And he does all of this training here at Mass. It’s here where he calls us, it’s here in which he guides us, it’s here that he feeds us, it’s here that he protects us from the evil one, it’s here where he loves us to the full and gives us his abundant life. Indeed, with the Lord as our Good Shepherd, we have it all. Let us with joy come to meet him at the banquet he has set for us here on earth, which is a foretaste of the fullness of life he is seeking to give us in the eternal banquet he is preparing for us, with George, Adalbert, Peter and all the saints, in the eternal verdant pastures.

The readings for today’s Mass were: