Every fourth Sunday of Easter, each year, is known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” because the gospel will always be from Saint John’s narrative on Jesus as the One who lays down his life for his sheep. At the same time, it is a Sunday on which we take the time to reflect and pray on vocations to religious life and specifically to priesthood. We’ll do a bit of both today.
First of all, Jesus is the “Good Shepherd” who pre-existed all things. He fulfills Old Testament promises from several of the prophets that God himself will come to shepherd His people. For example, Isaiah 40:11 declares, “He will feed his flock like a shepherd,” and in Ezekiel 34:15 we read, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, says the Lord.” Therefore, we must remember that to say Jesus is the Good Shepherd is an understatement, for he sustains all things in their being and existence, as God. He “shepherds” so to speak, the entire universe and even the unseen realities, so that even the angels would consider him their good and tender shepherd. The astonishing thing however is that the understatement comes from the mouth of God himself. In other words, he is giving us, yet again, a masterclass in humility. God, laying down his life? God, as a shepherd? A shepherd in Jesus’ day, was not like the lawyers, or the scribes, or the doctors or politicians. A shepherd was a citizen on the lowest tier of the social class. To mention shepherds and the poor back then would be synonymous in most cases. Yet they were poor with a lot of heart, for they were often required to defend their sheep from danger and to provide for them.
The image that he himself gave us helps us to therefore home in on a particular aspect of his shepherding, and that is its sacrificial and tender nature.
In today’s passage Jesus shows us how the deepest kind of tenderness is borne out of sacrifice, like a mother or father who have to crawl out of bed in the middle of the night to rock and cradle in their loving arms a crying new born while they fall back to sleep to the humming of nursery songs and the gentle kisses on the forehead.
We know that we are all God’s precious sons and daughters. If we doubt that at all, his words here ought to convince us. Listen: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” And then he tells us that this is what he is doing, always. “…I lay down my life for the sheep.” Notice the present tense. In other words, not just at the cross, but our Lord, by the mere fact that he “took the plunge” and descended from heaven to be born among us, was already dying to himself from day one. Yet the three times in this short passage that he makes an allusion to his sacrificial mission, we obviously are being given a glimpse into how he would eventually demonstrate his divine chivalry and the ultimate expression of his kenosis, on the cross. “He emptied himself and took the form of a slave” Philippians 2:7, but he died as one who was captive, unable to move, and powerlessly devoid of honour, glory and the basic necessities so as to continue living. At least slaves had food and water, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to serve.
On the cross, our Lord was stripped of everything, not out of love for strangers (because to God there are no strangers), but for each of us whom he has known intimately from all eternity. Jesus declares this intimacy between him and each of us when he said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own…”
Now for the most part, the majority of us would not be considered mystics by any stretch of the imagination, but is it not somehow a mystical experience when we get the feeling that Jesus knows us indeed and we know him, and there’s something almost magical happening between us? We know the feeling. So powerful and real is this feeling, that Jesus compares his relationship with us to that of his relationship with the Father and affirms that we indeed do know him, and that every intuition which suggested he was right there by our side, was one-hundred percent real. Listen to what he says here; “my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father.” My own know me.
It is here that Jesus begins to speak about Easter. About new life. About how because he knows us and we know him, new life is possible where normally one would only find death.
Jesus continues by saying: “…I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again."
And so it was. The Second Reading contains part of an address Peter gave in the Temple after he and John had cured a “crippled beggar” at the Temple’s Beautiful Gate. The healing of the man in the name of the crucified Jesus through the agency of Peter and John is the proof that Jesus is risen and working among us.
All of this is intimately linked to a second theme we reflect on this Sunday: Vocations. Peter and John and the others were sent out to also be shepherds among the people of God. They saw and experienced the Saviour’s sacrificial life and were asked to imitate that in their own lives. As we know, it was a daunting task for each of them. It was a supernatural mission which called for supernatural graces from above and Jesus promised that signs and miracles would accompany them. Ultimately, for most of them this meant the shedding of their blood, where God gave them strength to glorify him on their last day of pilgrimage with the supreme sacrifice of their lives, as they stepped into the eternal glory of Heaven prepared for them from the foundations of the earth. Yet, Jesus asks each of us to die to ourselves each day so as to bring the good news and good things to many others whom he places on our path. This is a vocation—a young man or woman who decides to say yes to laying down their life for the good of God’s people, and how he blesses beyond any semblance of proper recompense all those who do so. Jesus says to all those who give him their lives for the good of others, the same thing he said to Peter: “Everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life” Matthew 19:29.
Let us pray for and support all those wonderful men and women, young and not so young, who have left everything so as to imitate the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the ones he loved.
In a particular way I ask you to pray for all the young men I have been called to accompany. There’s eleven of them here in Rome and without getting into great detail, let me just tell you, that if you had the wonderful joy and blessing of knowing each of them, you would get a glimpse into the awesome gift that a vocation is.
Each of them come to us with their own story, but it is a story which reflects the love and tenderness of the Good Shepherd of their souls, who alone could weave a masterpiece so unique, so individually special to each of them, that from it they would hear the voice of the shepherd saying deep within their hearts: “Come, follow me. I will make you fishers of men.” May the Lord mercifully continue to bless and be patient with all of us whom he has called to work and tend to his wonderful vineyard.
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