4th Sunday of Easter—Good Shepherd Sunday (Cycle C) – April 25, 2010

Scripture Readings
First Acts 13:14, 43-52
Second Revelation 7:9, 14b-17
Gospel John 10:27-30

Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• Being faithful to the grace of God that has been given to us.
• The Lamb of God and the sheep who hear and know him
• What it means to follow Christ

2. Exegetical Notes
• “…urged them to remain faithful to the grace of God…. All who were destined for eternal life
came to believe:” “Often along with the reading of Scripture in the synagogue came a homily
or brief exposition that here is called a word of encouragement…. Those who have been
ordained to eternal life believe. The word ‘ordain’ appears four times in Acts (13:48; 15:2;
22:10; 28:23). In the other contexts of Acts, it means ‘appoint’ or ‘assign’ to something. Here
is refers to God’s sovereign work over salvation, where God has assigned those who come
to eternal life.” (Darrell L. Bock)
• “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb:” “The striking
paradox (made white in the blood of the Lamb) has a haunting beauty; and, as beauty, it
speaks truth. It expresses God’s and the Lamb’s definition of victory: they have won by
suffering death, not be inflicting hurt.” (Wilfrid J. Harrington, O.P.)
• “My sheep hear my voice; I know them…. I give them eternal life, and they shall never
perish:” “Jesus’ ‘sheep’ listen to his voice; he knows them, and they follow him (10:3, 4, 8, 14,
16). Jesus gives them (present tense) eternal life (cf. 10:10), and they will never, ever perish
(emphatic negative). Together with the repeated assertion that no one can snatch his sheep
out of his (or the Father’s) hands, this conveys the image of utter security on the part of
Jesus’ followers.” (Andreas J. Kostenberger)

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• 2340 Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will
 want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted to the
situations that confront him, obedience to God's commandments, exercise of the moral
virtues, and fidelity to prayer.
• 2642 The prophets and the saints, all those who were slain on earth for their witness to
Jesus, the vast throng of those who, having come through the great tribulation, have gone
before us into the Kingdom, all sing the praise and glory of him who sits on the throne, and of
the Lamb. In communion with them, the Church on earth also sings these songs with faith in
the midst of trial. By means of petition and intercession, faith hopes against all hope and
gives thanks to the "Father of lights," from whom "every perfect gift" comes down. Thus faith
is pure praise.
• 1137 The book of Revelation of St. John, read in the Church's liturgy, first reveals to us, "A
throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne": "the Lord God." It then shows the
Lamb, "standing, as though it had been slain": Christ crucified and risen, the one high priest
of the true sanctuary, the same one "who offers and is offered, who gives and is given."
Finally it presents "the river of the water of life . . . flowing from the throne of God and of the
Lamb," one of most beautiful symbols of the Holy Spirit.
• 754 "The Church is, accordingly, a sheepfold, the sole and necessary gateway to which is
Christ. It is also the flock of which God himself foretold that he would be the shepherd, and
whose sheep, even though governed by human shepherds, are unfailingly nourished and led
by Christ himself, the Good Shepherd and Prince of Shepherds, who gave his life for his
sheep.
• 764 "This Kingdom shines out before men in the word, in the works and in the presence of
Christ." To welcome Jesus' word is to welcome "the Kingdom itself." The seed and beginning
of the Kingdom are the "little flock" of those whom Jesus came to gather around him, the
flock whose shepherd he is. They form Jesus' true family. To those whom he thus gathered
around him, he taught a new "way of acting" and a prayer of their own.

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• St. John Chrysostom: “Did you notice Paul’s wisdom? Not only did he win admiration at the
time, but also put in them a second longing for listening.”
• St. Bede the Venerable: “For they now stand before God’s throne, crowned, who once lay,
worn down by pain, before the thrones of earthly judges. They stand in the sight of the Lamb,
and for no cause can they be separated from contemplating his glory there, since here they
could not be separated from his love through punishments.”
• St. Augustine: “What is the voice of the shepherd? ‘And that repentance and forgiveness of
sins should be preached in his name throughout all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’
There is a the voice of the shepherd. Recognize it and follow if you are a sheep.”
• St. Cyril of Alexandria: “When Christ says, ‘I know mine,’ he means I will receive them and
give them a permanent mystical relationship with myself. By a certain God-given grace,
believers follow in the footsteps of Christ. No longer subject to the shadows of the law, they
obey the commands of Christ and, guided by his words, rise through grace to his own
dignity.”
• Theodore of Mopsuestia: “Jesus says: This is the difference between you and my followers:
you do not believe after you hear my words and saw my miracles, while they, even though
they may suffer ten thousand afflictions, will never recede from my presence. For this reason
they will receive the reward due to their good will, namely, eternal life.”
• Venerable John Henry Newman: “How much more was the truth itself, the good Shepherd,
when he came, both guileless and heroic? If shepherds are men of simple lives and obscure
fortunes, uncorrupted and unknown in kings’ courts and marts of commerce, how much more
he who was ‘the carpenter’s son,’ who was ‘meek and lowly of heart,’ who ‘did not strive nor
cry,’ who ‘went about doing good,’ who ‘when he was reviled, reviled not again,’ and who was
‘despised and rejected of men?’ If, on the other hand, they are men of suffering and trial, how
much more so he who was ‘a man of sorrows,’ and who ‘laid down his life for the sheep?’ But
whatever difficulty there be in knowing when Christ calls, and whither, yet at least let us look
out for his call. Let us not be content with ourselves; let us not make our own hearts our
home, or this world our home, or our friends our home. Let us view ourselves as sheep in the
trackless desert, who, unless they follow the shepherd, will be sure to lose themselves, sure
to fall in with the wolf. We are safe while we keep close to him, and under his eye. Blessed
are they who give the flower of their days, and their strength of soul and body to him.
Blessed are they who resolve— come good, come evil, come sunshine, come tempest, come
honor, come dishonor— that that he shall be their Lord and master, their king and God!”
• Bernard Bro, O.P.: “Grace gives us the thirst for God, for God’s bliss, and no other kind. That
alone can satisfy our craving, even though we may not know it. We may stay a long while
without realizing, may carry this germ about inside us for a long while without anything very
much showing. At most, an obscure uneasiness may warn us that, despite a happy or
thrilling life as commonly regarded, we are not satisfied; and then we find ourselves dreaming
from time to time of something new, unexpected, extraordinary which never actually comes.
Then, one day, the uneasiness becomes a call, an invitation to set out; we realize that down
there and far away there is something waiting for us, and that this something is someone,
and that this someone is God, God’s bliss, a mystery which the eyes of man have not seen
nor the ears of man heard, something unheard of and unfathomable. Then we set out in
Christ’s footsteps, like sheep following their shepherd, not in fact knowing where he is
leading, since we know nothing whatever about this mysterious bliss in store for us. We only
know that it is happiness, true happiness, our happiness, the happiness for which we were
created, and that is all we want to know.”
• M.-D. Philippe, O.P.: “All the actions of the apostolic life of Christ, the Good Shepherd, were
plainly acts of mercy to his sheep, to all people. But it is in the agony in the garden and on
the cross that we really reach the mystery of his merciful heart. All the sufferings of human
sinners, all the consequences of sin, he made his own, accepting them freely. No suffering of
mankind remained foreign to his heart; he knew them all and bore them all deep within his
heart. Living with greater intensity than any other man, he bore them in his measureless love
for each one of us. Suffering is proportionate to love, and hence it is so amazing that his
mercy should be such as it is. He knew what he did. Being the good shepherd who knew his
sheep with their weakness and needs, he knew that to be the good shepherd of men with all
that this involved was to love the life of his sheep more than his own life, to be willing to put
himself in the place of sinners, to be an outcast for the sake of his brethren, to be reduced to
nothing, to be wretched, despised, and rejected beyond all others.”
• Hans Urs von Balthasar: “The life promised by the Lamb is not static, but is continually
springing forth, which is why those who belong to the Lord ‘shall never again know hunger or
thirst.’”
• Hans Urs von Balthasar: “The sheep belonging to Jesus, who are known by him and who
follow him, are promised three times that they belong to him and to the Father with finality.
What Jesus grants us here below, through his life, his suffering, his resurrection, his Church,
and his sacraments, is already eternal life. Whoever accepts it, whoever refuses to reject it,
can never again ‘perish.’”
• Dominique Barthélemy, O.P.: “More often than not, our human instinct persuades us to
undertake the very thing for which we were made, but our aim is crooked, we miscalculate
our strength and come to the conclusion that the thing cannot be done. At such a moment,
the danger is that like Moses we marry and get busy with our flocks. But the moment God
himself speaks, just when we no longer have the heart to intervene and act, it is essential
that we should do only two things: listen first of all and not close our ears on the pretext that
we no longer wish to intervene, and believe, that is to say, stake all on the Word of God. Only
thus will we have the courage to take again, without any personal inclination, the way we
took before with so much enthusiasm, and on which we failed. Because now we are walking
with God. Before, in our youthful enthusiasm, it was not with God but with our personal
illusions that we walked. It is nevertheless a good thing to be logical about our early illusions.
For if we are not logical in these, we have not loyally experienced them right to the end, as
we should. But after that, once the illusions are exposed, it is good to keep our ear open for
faith.”
• Scott Hahn: “The title ‘lamb’ seems almost comical in its inappropriateness. Lambs don’t
usually rank high on lists of most admired animals. They are not particularly strong, clever,
quick, or handsome. Other animals would seem more worthy. We can easily imagine Jesus,
for example, as the Lion of Judah (Rv 5:5). Lions are kingly; they’re strong and agile; nobody
messes with the king of beasts. Yet, it is the Lamb who leads an army of hundreds of
thousands of men and angels, striking fear in the hearts of the wicked (Rv 6:15-16). This last
image, of the fierce and frightening Lamb, is almost too incongruous to imagine with a
straight face.”
• From The Religious Potential of the Child (a book about the Catechesis of the Good
Shepherd) by Sofia Cavalletti: “The children know that the Good Shepherd gives all the
necessities to us: food, water, safe passage. Adults know this too, don’t we? But do we
know, as the children do, the other benefits of staying close to the Shepherd? Do we know
as four-year-old Elizabeth knew, that ‘he would take the sheep out to see the bright stars at
night,’ or, like three-and-a-half-year-old Daniel that ‘he would take them to a good hill and let
them roll down it?’... A four-and-a-half year old child led the sheep one by one out of the fold
and placed them behind the Good Shepherd figure and turned it around momentarily so that
it faced the sheep. The catechist observed the child without disturbing him. When he was
finished working, she asked him why he had done it that way and the child replied: ‘He is
calling them by name.’… Another child (four years old) asked himself in a whisper: ‘Why do
the sheep walk behind the Good Shepherd?’ and he answered himself, still whispering:
‘Because he is God.’ After a little girl (five years old) heard it read that the Good Shepherd
walks ahead of the sheep and they follow because they know His voice, she took the figure
of the Shepherd in one hand and a sheep in the other and had them walk closely together all
around the sheepfold. ‘Then she put the first sheep back in the fold and repeated the same
 action with all the others, one by one. At one point a sheep fell on the floor, and the child
stooped down to pick it up with the Good Shepherd figure.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• The story of St. Joan of Arc, the shepherdess, who heeded the divine voices that were sent
to her to God’s glory.

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “In the Ancient Near East, it was customary for kings to style themselves shepherds of their
people. This was an image of their power, a cynical image: to them their subjects were like
sheep, which the shepherd could dispose of as he wished. When the shepherd of all
humanity, the living God, himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the lambs, with
those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how he reveals himself to be the true
shepherd: ‘I am the Good Shepherd…I lay down my life for the sheep,’ Jesus says of himself
(Jn 10:14). It is not power, but love that redeems us! This is God’s sign: he himself is
love…God, who became, a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by
those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by
the impatience of man.”
• “One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people entrusted to him,
even as he loves Christ whom he serves. ‘Feed my sheep,’ says Christ to Peter. Feeding
means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep
what is truly good, the nourishment of God’s truth, of God’s word, the nourishment of his
presence, which he gives us in the Blessed Sacrament.”
• “The image of the shepherd comes from remote times. In the Orient of antiquity, kings would
designate themselves as the shepherds of their peoples. Moses and David in the Old
Testament, before being called to become the leaders and pastors of the People of God,
were in fact shepherds with flocks. In the anguish of the period of the Exile, confronted by the
failure of Israel’s shepherds, that is, of its political and religious leaders, Ezekiel sketched the
image of God himself as the Shepherd of his people. Through the prophet God says: ‘As a
shepherd seeks out his flock… so will I seek out my sheep; and I will rescue them from all
places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness’ (Ez 34:12).
Jesus now proclaims that this time has come: he himself is the Good Shepherd through
whom God himself cares for his creature, man, gathering human beings and leading them to
the true pasture.”
• “The Lord tells us three things about the true shepherd: he gives his own life for his sheep;
he knows them and they know him; he is at the service of unity. The shepherd lays down his
life for the sheep. The mystery of the cross is at the center of Jesus’ service as a shepherd: it
is the great service that he renders to all of us. He gives himself and not only in a distant
past. In the Holy Eucharist he does so every day… Day after day it is necessary to learn that
I do not possess my life for myself. Day by day I must learn to abandon myself; to keep
myself available for whatever he, the Lord, needs of me at a given moment, even if other
things seem more appealing and more important to me: it means giving life, not taking it. It is
in this very way that we experience freedom: freedom from ourselves, the vastness of being.
In this very way, by being useful, in being a person whom the world needs, our life becomes
 important and beautiful. Only those who give up their own life find it. Let us entrust ourselves
to Jesus the True Shepherd.”

7. Other Considerations
• In many ways, the holy multitude that stands before the throne of the Lamb represents those
who fulfill the Beatitudes. They are those “who have survived the time of great distress”—
blessed are those persecuted for holiness sake. “The Lamb will shelter them”—the reign of
God is theirs; they shall inherit the land. “They will not hunger or thirst anymore”—blessed
are they who hunger and thirst for holiness; they shall have their fill. “Nor will the sun or any
heat strike them”—rather, mercy shall be theirs. “The Lamb who is in the center of the throne
will shepherd them”—their reward is great in heaven. He will “lead then to springs of life-
giving water”—they shall see God. “God will wipe every tear from their eyes”—they shall be
consoled; they shall be called sons of God.

Recommended Resources

PLEASE CHECK SPR ARCHIVES

Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006.

Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html

Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—Cycle C. Huntington: Our Sunday

Visitor, 2000.

http://www.wordonfire.org/

Hahn, Scott:
http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm.

Martin, Francis: http://www.hasnehmedia.com/homilies.shtml

http://sc.fhview.com/sc_customplayer/seriesitems/1/119117