The Good Shepherd’s Leadership Training of His Sheep To Be Shepherds, Fourth Sunday of Easter (B), April 21, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B
April 21, 2024
Acts 4:8-12, Ps 118, 1 John 3:1-2, Jn 10:11-18

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• During the Advent Season we have a special Sunday of joy called Gaudete Sunday and during Lent we have another entitled Laetare Sunday, both of which help us, in the midst of those seasons, anticipate the joy of Christmas and Easter, respectively, and, conscious of that joy, persevere with hope until those celebrations. During the Easter Season, while there’s no Sunday that is explicitly linked to a Scripture passage and the first word of those respective liturgies bidding us to rejoice, we do have, in the heart of the Easter Season each year, Good Shepherd Sunday, which is given to us to focus our Easter joy on the fact that the Risen Lord Jesus not only rose from the dead, not only remains with us risen, but relates to us, now and until the end of time, as our shepherd. Every year, on the fourth of the seven Sundays of Easter, 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 carries us back, he lays down his life for us, and he seeks to give us life to the full here and forever — if only we receive and respond to his shepherdly care.
• Jesus’ words in his Good Shepherd discourse were powerful when he preached them in the Temple area during the Feast of Tabernacles several months before his death. But the Church has us read them in the heart of the Easter Season, on the Sunday closest to the 25th day of the 50-day season, because when looked at in the light of Jesus’ Passion, Death and Resurrection, they take on much deeper meaning. They show us not just 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. These indicate to us how to go from being like faithful sheep who hear Jesus’ voice calling us to follow him to those who model our whole life on him so that we may imitate and extend his shepherdly care to others.
• The first step in the transformation the risen Lord Jesus wants to bring about in us is to have us relate to him as our Good Shepherd. This is a challenge for many people today, far from an agrarian context, in which we rebel against the image of supposedly stupid, docile sheep in favor of modern ideologies flowing from Nietzsche’s will-to-power or Marx’s suspicion, cynicism and class warfare. This March 8, during his third Lenten sermon to Pope Francis and the leaders of the Roman Curia, Capuchin Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the Papal Household since 1980 and perhaps not only the greatest Catholic preacher alive but one whom future centuries will regard as among the greatest in the history of the Church, spoke about resistance to Jesus as our Good Shepherd by our proud overreaction to being labeled sheep. Few would object if Jesus had referred to us as lions, bears, elephants or giraffes, all of which have a certain greatness about them, but few would list sheep among their list of most admired animals and readily employ them as images of virtue in children’s fables. Perhaps the most famous nursery rhyme to feature one, Mary Had A Little Lamb, focuses on, basically, the lamb’s pitiable helplessness. Cardinal Cantalamessa, now 90, said, “Let’s face it, the image of the good shepherd, and the related images of sheep and flock, are not really fashionable nowadays. … People disdainfully reject the role of sheep and the idea of a flock. They do not realize, however, how much they experience in practice the situation that they condemn in theory.… We let ourselves be guided supinely by all sorts of manipulation and occult persuasion. Others create models of well-being and behavior, ideals, and goals of progress, and people adopt them. … We eat what they tell us, dress as fashion dictates, and speak as we hear.” Many reject being Jesus’ sheep, we know, but sheepishly follow every latest diet fad, every lame new influencer, every supposed guru, even every popular mob. The truth is that we are essentially always following some shepherd. When we reject following Christ as our Good Shepherd, we often succumb to following some bad or false shepherd. This is something Cardinal Cantalamessa also highlights. Summarizing the Old Testament, he said, “Alongside the image of the good shepherd, that of the bad shepherd makes its appearance. In the prophet Ezekiel we find a terrible indictment against the bad shepherds who feed only themselves. They feed on milk and dress in wool, but they don’t care in the slightest about the sheep whom they actually treat ‘with cruelty and violence’ (Ez 34:1ff). This indictment against bad shepherds is followed by a promise: God himself will one day take loving care of his flock: ‘The lost I will search out, the strays I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, and the sick I will heal’ (Ez 34:16). In the Gospel,” Cantalamessa concludes, “Jesus takes up this theme of the good and bad shepherd, but with something new: ‘I am the good shepherd!,’ he says. God’s promise has become reality, exceeding all expectations.”
• The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity came into the world to be our Good Shepherd, surpassing all the hopes of the people of Israel. But his appearances are not enough. His actions are not enough. We need trustingly to relate to him as our Good Shepherd. Based on what Jesus indicates in John 10, he seeks to love us as Shepherd in seven different ways, each of which requires a response on our part.
• First, Jesus says that the Good Shepherd knows his sheep and they know him. In tonight’s Gospel, he says something indeed shocking. “I am the Good Shepherd, and I know my sheep and mine know me,” but then he adds: “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” It’s not at all startling that Jesus knows us. After all, as we pray in Psalm 139, we can say in truth, “Lord, you have probed me, you know me: you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar. Even before a word is on my tongue, Lord, you know it all. Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me.” But what is startling is that he says his sheep know him just like he knows the Father. That’s how intimate he wants our relationship to be. He wants us to know him just like the Father knows him and he knows the Father. That can only happen through a life of prayer and intimate friendship. Cardinal Cantalamessa comments, “In the beginning, Israel was a people of nomadic shepherds. The bedouins of the desert today give us an idea of what life was once like for the tribes of Israel. … An almost personal relationship develops between the shepherd and the flock. Spending day after day together in solitary places, without a living soul around, the shepherd ends up knowing everything about every sheep. The sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd who often talks out loud to the sheep, as if they were people.” The good sheep of the Good Shepherd are meant to have this type of relationship, this friendship, this intimate knowledge with the Lord Jesus.
• Second, Jesus says he calls his sheep by name. None of us is a number or an anonymous extra. The Good Shepherd knows us personally and he summons us. Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, held annually since 1963, to help us all reflect on how the Good Shepherd calls each of us to be a Christian, calls each of to be a saint, calls each of us within that vocation to holiness to serve God and others in some state of life. Today we pray in a special way for all those whom God is calling to serve his as priests and religious, that everyone he is calling will open their ears to hear his call and say yes to it. We pray in a particular way for those here at Columbia the Good Shepherd is summoning to serve him as priests and religious, that they may have the courage to hear and heed the call.
• Third, Jesus calls his sheep to follow him as he leads us, sometimes where we desire to go, sometimes even down dark valleys or across the road where we may not want to go. But Jesus’ good sheep follow him wherever he leads, trusting he knows the direction. They don’t seek to call their own shots, to do their own thing, to imitate the devil in crooning Frank Sinatra’s I Did It My Way. Good Shepherd Sunday is an occasion for which of us to ask, “Do I really follow Jesus? Do I try to emulate his life, his choices, his values? Or do I follow others or am I enslaved to my own will and desires?”
• Fourth, Jesus says that as Good Shepherd, he leads us to verdant pastures so that we can graze. He sets a table before us. He feeds us. A good sheep eats what the Master sets — the rich feast of the Word of God, the food of doing the Father’s Will, and most especially the Word made flesh given here for us on the altar.
• Fifth, the Good Shepherd leaves the 99 and goes after the lost sheep. He never forgets us. He loves us enough to hunt us down. Many of you know the movie Ransom starring Liam Neeson who with a special set of skills hunts down the human traffickers who have kidnapped his daughter in Paris. That’s Hollywood fiction. Jesus the Good Shepherd, with his far greater set of skills, in real life comes after us when we have gotten lost or captured by others or the desire to fit in. When the Good Shepherd finds us, he wants us to return with him and share his joy.
• Sixth, Jesus the Good Shepherd says he protects his sheep and defends them from the thieves, marauders and wolves. He in fact gives his life to protect us. He says no one can take us from his hand. But we can nevertheless wander from his hand. We can leave his hand. To be a good sheep is to persevere in communion and conversion.
• Seventh, Jesus the Good Shepherd says he gives his sheep eternal life. This is what everything else points to. His knowledge, his call, his guidance, his food, his individual care, and his protection all are meant to lead us to a relationship that will never end. But we must receive that gift precisely as a gift and make sure that other, lesser ends, do not displace it from the treasure of our heart. Jesus was stressing that eternal life, as he said elsewhere, is to know him 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 the Lord, as a Bridegroom, and 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 this Good Shepherd discourse, “I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.” 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). To respond as good sheep of the Good Shepherd is to long for this fulfillment with him and to orient our life to it.
• Therefore, the most important thing in life is to learn how to enter into relationship with the Good Shepherd, to choose him, to believe in him, to trust in him, to follow him, to live in him, and to receive his gifts. 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 embrace 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 becalled 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.” We will one day not only be God’s children, but truly like Jesus himself through the beatific vision, by entering into relationship with Jesus, by sharing in his own divine filiation, “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,” as St. Paul says (Rom 8:17).
• So that’s the first step in the way the Good Shepherd wants us to relate to him as good sheep. But the second step in which he takes us far beyond the caricature of a stupid, docile creature, is by strengthening us through his shepherdly love to become shepherds, true leaders, of others. 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. He wants to take his disciples and make them apostles. This is what often happens in the lives of young people who become parents. This is what occurs when older brothers and sisters mature and take responsibility for their younger siblings. This is what takes place with godparents who are 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, true, good shepherds of others. We know that we are experiencing a crisis of leadership in so many areas of life. Many world leaders, rather than paragons of prudence and courageous champions of the common good, are petty and pusillanimous figures unwilling to overcome their weaknesses and grudges to rise to the needs of the moment. Much closer to home on college campuses, including our own, we see many failures of leadership among administrators and student leaders on display since October 7. It’s important and urgent to examine the decisions of leaders not through worldly standards but by the standards of genuine leadership Christ the Good Shepherd gives us. And it’s key that each of us, as Catholics, enroll in the Good Shepherd’s leadership master class so that we can learn from him how to be the salt, light and leaven the crisis of the moment requires and bring his hard won peace to the situation of hatred, hostility and division in which so many are suffering.
• We see the type of leadership transformation Christ wants to do in us 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, after Peter’s three fold betrayal on Holy Thursday, 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 — feedmy 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 — like ours — would be shown in how we love those whom Jesus loves. Jesus wants us to get to know others by name and lead them to him, to help them recognize his voice and to 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 all of Sacred Scripture is found in tonight’s Gospel. It’s when Jesus says, “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 willinglygives his life to save ours. He lays it down freely. And he does so in the present tense, because he is in a perpetual state of self-giving. From his perspective, his crucifixion and death were 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.
• This free self-giving, this willingness, this refusal to have his life taken from him but rather to give it as a gift, is super important for us to grasp. To be a shepherd like Jesus is to imitate, indeed to share in and extend, his self-giving love — and to do so willingly. We live in an age in which so many see themselves fundamentally as victims. They engage in a diabolical Marxist logic of oppressors-versus-oppressed and, if in the oppressed category, they think that the end of overturning injustice justifies any and all means, including immoral ones. When I was working at the United Nations, some groups tried to compete against each other to show how many victims cards they could put on the table as a result of what they dubbed “multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination.” Some strived to lay down a royal straight flush of victim cards, race, sex, national origin, socio-economic status, disability, and the list went on. There are always real victims of injustice, and we must defend them and sacrifice to help them obtain justice. But while we will always be influenced by the ways we’ve suffered, we shouldn’t be defined by what we’ve endured. Jesus wants his followers, even after the attacks of the wolves, not to view ourselves fundamentally as victims but as courageous shepherds. He would say to us elsewhere that if someone strikes us on the right cheek, freely to offer him the left; if someone wants to go to law with us over our tunic, freely to hand him our cloak as well; 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 consider ourselves victims, into a circumstance of self-giving love, freely, willingly, laying down our lives for God and others.
• This the path we see St. Peter take in the first reading, when he defends himself for a “good deed done to a cripple.” All of us ought to be capable of making the same defense of good deeds done for those everyone else neglects. Today’s second reading reminds us clearly about those for whom we’re caring: fellow children of God, which makes them not strangers but, truly, our brothers and sisters. He wants us to sacrifice for them — the last and the least of the world — not out merely out of religious duty, or a sense of guilt, or even like some religious in fidelity to a special vow to care for the poor and neglected, but willingly out of love. Jesus who said, “No one takes my life from me. I freely lay it down!,” wants us freely to give our life, too, in love. That’s what good sheep who have become good shepherds do. St. John would say in his first letter, just a little bit after the passage in today’s second reading, “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). That’s the essence of the Christian life! That’s what the Good Shepherd has done for us. That’s ultimately the metamorphosis of the world Jesus wants to work in an era that rebels against the docility of sheep. Jesus wants to transform us from sheep ultimately to shepherds who care for others as he cares for us. Even more so. He wants us to treat them not as “objects” of our sacrificial care, like helpless sheep, but rather as subjects, who through our help, may be able to be transformed, too, from sheep into shepherds who will in turn take their own responsibility for the good of others. That’s the Good Shepherd’s leadership model, transforming lambs into sheep into shepherds who help other sheep become shepherds, too.
• Every Mass is an opportunity for us to experience this transformation that the Good Shepherd wants to bring about in each of us. It’s here that Jesus the Good Shepherd calls each of us by name and seeks to have us grow intimately in knowing him as he knows us. It’s here with his Word that he seeks to guide us along right paths. It’s here that he prepares a banquet for us, one meant to be a foretaste of the eternal banquet. It’s here that 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,” so that we, eating his flesh and drinking his blood, may enter into communion with him risen from the dead so that we might do this in his memory, laying down our life, giving our body and blood for God’s glory and for others’ good. It’s here that Jesus seeks to fill us with wonder that, if God so loves us that he not only permits us to be called his children, and not only adopts us as his beloved kids, but feeds us with himself, then we can look with hope to the transformation into shepherds that he wants to bring about and ahead with faith-filled eagerness to what this Eucharistic banquet leads to, when we shall become even more like our Good Shepherd, through seeing him as he is.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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