Living as Good Sheep and Good Shepherds of the Good Shepherd, Fourth Sunday of Easter (A), April 30, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, New York
Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A
April 30, 2023
Acts 2:14.36-41, Ps 23, 1 Pet 2:20-25, Jn 10:1-10

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• 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 words of today’s Psalm: “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. In St. Ignatius of Loyola’s famous Suscipe prayer, in which we give him permission to take and receive all our liberty, memory, understanding, will, all we have and call our own, we declare, “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 not just sufficient but the treasure on which we’ve centered our heart. 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, a different 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 recognize his voice in the midst of the cacophony of worldly gurus competing for their attention and follow him rather than those competing voices. They enter into this mind-blowing I-thou relationship with him, responding to his call and calling out to him by name in return. In his homily this morning in Budapest, Pope Francis said, “The history of salvation does not begin with us, with our merits, our abilities and our structures. It begins with the call of God. … Jesus came as the Good Shepherd of humanity, to call us and bring us home. … When we, like sheep, had ‘gone astray’ and each one of us ‘turned to his own way’ (Is 53:6), Jesus took upon himself our iniquities and bore our sins, leading us back to the Father’s heart. This is what we heard from the apostle Peter in today’s second reading: ‘You were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls’ (1 Pet2:25). Today too, Jesus … comes to us as the Good Shepherd, he calls us by name and tells us how precious we are in his eyes. He heals our wounds, takes upon himself our frailties and gathers us into the unity of his fold, as children of the Father and brothers and sisters of one another.”
  • Second, Jesus 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, to the Sacrament of Confirmation where he “anoints our head with oil,” to the Eucharistic banquet where he “spreads the table” before us and makes our cup overflow, and ultimately toward the “verdant pastures” of heaven. He leads us to the fold of the Church so that, together with his other sheep, he may lead us on a journey, a true adventure, a life-time pilgrimage. He doesn’t merely point that path out or accompany us along it, but becomes that path, the Gate into whom we enter. Pope Francis this morning focused on the apostolic dimension of the Good Shepherd’s guidance. We “were first gathered into God’s family to become his people; then we too were sent out into the world so that, courageously and fearlessly, we might become heralds of the Good News, witnesses of the love that has given us new birth. … After bringing us back into God’s embrace and into the fold of the Church, Jesus is the door that leads us back into the world. He urges us to go forth to encounter our brothers and sisters, … to step out of our comfort zones and find the courage to reach out to all those peripheries that need the light of the Gospel.” Good sheep follow the Good Shepherd’s guidance in all of these ways and walk in these 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 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 wants us to have life to the full. 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.” 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, which he was putting into practice in today’s first reading, preaching to the crowds, feeding them with the Gospel, and calling them to follow Christ to repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Spirit and salvation.
• This same truth is depicted powerfully on the façade of incredibly beautiful Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls where St. Paul is buried. There we see Christ in the Center in two different images arranged vertically, an iconographic technique that means they should be interpreted together. One is him sitting on a throne with his right hand raised in blessing and in his left hand an open book, signifying the words he wants to speak to us. The words are, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” Underneath that is Jesus depicted as the Lamb looking as if he has been slain triumphant from the dead on the mountain of Calvary from which four rivers are flowing. And coming toward him on the mountain are twelve sheep, depicting the twelve apostles. They’re depicted first as sheep, as disciples of the Lord, whom the Lord then makes Shepherds, sending them out. Just as the Lord Jesus calls them to be missionary disciples so he calls each of us, by name.
• For the last 60 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 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, and not just from earthly gurus who try to lead people from Jesus and the narrow path that leads to life, but all those who, as Pope Francis said this morning, seek to take advantage of their role to take advantage of the flock.
  • 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 will never leave his flock untended. He continues to call, guide, feed, protect, give his life and lead us to life to the full, and seeks to do so through the priests he makes pastors after his own heart. After having listened to the Good Shepherd’s voice speaking to us in the Gospel, we ask him to fill us with gratitude for the “table he has prepared for us” and for the priesthood that uniquely makes this great banquet of life possible. We beg him to make us ever more attentive to his voice as he says, “This is my Body,” “This is the chalice of my Blood,” giving his life for us and to us so that we, each day, might have life to the full, and be strengthened on the journey of life to follow him all the way to the eternal sheepfold in the verdant pastures of heaven.

Gospel
JN 10:1-10

Jesus said:
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate
but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.
But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice,
as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has driven out all his own,
he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him,
because they recognize his voice.
But they will not follow a stranger;
they will run away from him,
because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.”
Although Jesus used this figure of speech,
the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them.

So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and robbers,
but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy;
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

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