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5/8 - 4thSunday of Easter 2022
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The fourth Sunday of Easter is always given over to the imagery of the Good Shepherd and is being christened ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’. It carries an invitation to pray for the Holy Father, Bishops and Pastors and all who play the role of a shepherd in the Church. The image of the shepherd appears to have been precious to the people of God for a very long time, perhaps it was a familiar motif even when David penned those familiar words of Psalm 23 over three thousand years ago.
Jesus of course uses this picture language to great effect in the Gospels. Some of the earliest images we have of Jesus involve this motif of the shepherd, usually carrying a lamb on his shoulders. Yet, who among us has the slightest idea what being a shepherd is like firsthand? This distance from the shepherd has not prevented the image of Jesus the good shepherd from being plastered on the walls of countless day cares and preschools operating in church basements. It adorns our Sunday School materials, and it is the name of many a Catholic parish.
And so, the idea of the shepherd leading sheep, the idea was this was a very responsible task and a very responsible job. And when the poets wrote poetry and they sang their songs, they enshrined God as their shepherd, who was the true shepherd. Jesus' statement about giving eternal life to his sheep occurs at a celebration of the feast of Dedication, i.e., Hanukkah, which commemorates the Maccabees' successful revolution against the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV, around 194 BCE. The evangelist says some of the people celebrating that feast were asking Jesus whether he was the Messiah. The context suggests that they were thinking of a Messiah along the militaristic lines of David the warrior and the Judah the Hammer. Jesus' answer implies that he provides ultimate security (“eternal life”) in another way, as shepherd of the flock the Father leads to him. And the rest of the Fourth Gospel helps us understand that one gains access to eternal life by accepting Jesus as sent by the Father and by laying down one's life for one's friends.
In the Jerusalem of Jesus’ day various flocks of sheep would arrive with their respective shepherds, only to be turned into the same sheepfold together. This made for a rather large gang of sheep, and there wasn’t any practice of branding or marking to tell which was which. You can see the practical problem right away. Sheep, unlike dogs, do not rejoice themselves into knots when their shepherd shows up. Then how does each shepherd get his own sheep back? Two ways. One, the shepherd knows all his own sheep by heart. He has a special name for each character in the flock. And second, the sheep themselves know their master’s voice unmistakably. When he calls out, they simply get up and come to him. They follow him out through the sheep-gate. No mistake about it.
And that is Jesus' reference in Sunday’s short Gospel. “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me,” he says. You and I are the sheep he is talking about. He says we “shall never perish,” because he holds us in his own hands. In fact, it was the Father who gave us to Jesus, and no one can ever take us out of the Father’s hands.
Think about it. Have you ever longed for someone who could make things alright, who could help lift the responsibility from your shoulders? Someone who knows you by name and cares about you. Maybe you do recognize Jesus’ voice when you hear it. It might be in the Gospel at Mass. Or when you receive the bread of everlasting life and the cup of salvation—not as a stranger might, but as a member of the well-fed and greatly cared for flock.
I bring you our personal wishes to all the moms in the parish. You too do a lot of ‘shepherding’ and we thank you. Our prayers and blessings on all our children who received Jesus in Holy Communion for the first time. Taking inspiration from today’s scripture, I would invite the families to gift each other two precious gifts: Attentiveness and Silence. There is lot of noise and distraction in our lives. Our attentiveness to one another and bringing more quiet times to our homes can be good spiritual food for our souls. Our spiritual part of ourselves can be attuned to God’s voice in silence. We have to listen and hear and open your heart to the wonder of the Good Shepherd’s silence caring for us, worrying about us, guiding us through all kinds of situations, and yet we must know that he will never leave us. He will always be there, and his joy is to be at the center of the silence in our own lives.
Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O