Fourth Sunday of Easter -- Good Shepherd Sunday

 Lectionary: 49

...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.

The Book of Genesis describes a confident relationship between humans and sheep since the very beginning. After many thousand years, sheep are docile to the point of blind stupidity; they cannot survive without constant guidance and intense surveillance. Attacked by lions, wolves, bears, or human thieves their instincts fail them. They must rely on their shepherds for protection. 

And yet, despite the odious comparison, humans have seen ourselves as sheep. It fits! Life on a dynamic planet is too unpredictable, confusing, and dangerous to be lived without a lot of help, both human and divine. Perhaps it's the foolishness of small children who will step out on a busy highway without looking left or right that reminds their guardians that we adults also need close supervision. 

On the fourth Sunday of Easter we hear gospel readings about Jesus the Good Shepherd. We're reminded of our sheepish helplessness in the face of constant bewilderment. We pray each year on this day especially for our pastors: our bishops and priests. We need the guidance of trusted authorities; that is, those authorized and anointed by God to lead us in a troubled, changing world. 

Just consider where we live. Astronomers tell us we live on a “dynamic planet,” meaning it is continually changing. Continents beneath our feet float like massive boats; they migrate on their rock beds a few inches each year; some as fast as your fingernails grow, which in a year can amount to a lot. They create tremors, earthquakes, mudslides, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. 

The earth is drenched with water and its ocean tides propel atmospheric currents, which create typhoons, hurricanes, and blizzards when they're not parching the land in drought. Clouds carry water to every surface of dry land, creating rivers and lakes above the surface and aquifers below it.  

Our fluid atmosphere flows continually through four seasons in the temperate zones; and even the poles have warm and cold seasons while the equator endures monsoons and droughts. There is no spot on earth which is not subject to its continual, unsettling change.   

This combination of air, water, and earth with the heat of the sun beneath the cyclic moon and the whirling globe have mysteriously generated many kinds of life, which also contribute to our dynamic planet, creating even more instability. Mosses, bushes, and trees erode rocks, creating landslides, while mountains fall into the sea, except when they are rising up through it, only to be greeted by bird-borne seeds to erode its rock and wash it into the sea again. 

And oh, by the way, the weather in North America is the most unstable of all the continents. We have blizzards, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, prairie fires, marsh fires, swamp fires, earthquakes, floods, sinkholes, and landslides like nowhere else. 

And finally, from this dynamic planet is born the human creature which needs stability and predictability but generates conflict, divisions, and warfare. Even as we struggle to grow a prosperous economy we fall into recessions and depressions. Our booms end in busts, and our anxieties in violence. 

We need help. If we don’t help one another we cannot survive. But we’re often at war with one another; and now our militaries have the power to destroy every living thing on the planet. We need God; we need a Good Shepherd. 

Jesus, our risen Lord renews God’s ancient promise to us and all the nations, which he gave through the Patriarch Abraham, 

"I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the Apostles speaks to us through the Church, especially through our shepherds. We have more than a Bible to guide us. We have the apostolic authority of the Pope and the bishops, the witness of the saints, and the vigilance of the Holy Spirit. We have the inspiration of our ancestors who brought their rosaries, statues, and priests from Europe to build churches, schools, hospitals, universities, convents, and monasteries. 

We need the anointed authority of the Church to remind us that God never intended suicide, drug abuse, abortion, or divorce. It wasn't supposed to be this way. And he gives us the Spirit to do better. 

Our Shepherd Saint Peter assures us,

By his wounds you have been healed.

For you had gone astray like sheep,

but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. 

Like sheep we stay with our shepherds. They’re human like us, and given to us by the Lord. We pray for them and we pray that the Lord will select worthy young men from our families to enter the priesthood or diaconate. We pray that our families will be found worthy to give these gifted young men to the Church. 

We cannot celebrate the Blessed Sacrament without priests, and we cannot live on this troubled, beautiful, dynamic planet without the Blessed Sacrament.