Good Shepherd Sunday
Homily for Fourth Sunday of Easter C - 11 May 2025
There is a story of a priest visiting a village in Wales who came across a shepherd boy and taught him to remember the words, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” by counting them on his fingers, starting with his thumb. He told the boy to hold onto his ring finger whenever he felt scared or alone.
Years later, the priest returned to the village and learned that the shepherd boy had died while on the mountain in a terrible storm. The villagers told how they had found the boy holding onto his ring finger, a testament to the comfort and faith he had found in the words the priest had taught him.
Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” is a classic example in the Scriptures of how God shepherds us, his people. This beautiful and most-loved psalm has given countless people solace and comfort over the centuries and still speaks to our needs today. In fact, the most common way used to describe the relationship between God and his people in the Scriptures, is the shepherd-sheep image. The psalm for today also proclaims, “We are his people, the sheep of his flock.”
This image of the shepherd-sheep relationship is also very common in the teaching and parables of Jesus. Remember the parable of the Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine and goes in search of the sheep that is lost. When he finds it, he brings it back with great joy carrying it over his shoulders.
Jesus uses this shepherd-sheep image in our Gospel reading for today to describe who he is for us and our relationship to him. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He knows us and we follow him. He keeps us safe for eternal life, and no one can take us from him.
This fourth Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday because the Gospel reading is always from part of the “I am the Good Shepherd” sermon of Jesus from John’s Gospel. It is a Sunday when we think of the shepherding love of God for us in Jesus.
This Sunday is also a day when the Church prays for vocations to the priesthood. Priests are called to be shepherds of God’s people, after the heart of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Right from the beginning, Jesus intended that some of his disciples would teach, lead, and nourish his people with the sacraments. And right from the beginning these leaders were called shepherds. The word, pastor, comes from the Latin, pastore, which means, shepherd. So, priests are shepherds or pastors, and the work they do is pastoral work. Think of the outpouring of gratitude over the past couple of weeks for the shepherding role of Pope Francis, and equally the joy we felt this past Thursday evening at the election of our new shepherd, Pope Leo XIV.
Pope Leo XIV, like Pope Francis before him, is called to be a Christ-like shepherd, who guides the Church in unity and peace. Significantly, Pope Leo’s first words on appearing on the balcony of St Peter’s were, “Peace be with you,” echoing Jesus’ own words to his disciples after his resurrection.
One way for us to enter into the profound and beautiful meaning of this Good Shepherd image is for each of us to know our need for a shepherd. If you think of it, it is pretty standard for us to often ask ourselves questions like: What must I do? What direction must I go in? Where am I going? Like sheep in the wilderness, we face challenges, dangers, insecurities, and complexities. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, helps us and guides us to navigate the maze of life with its demands, spiritual longings, and physical needs. He gives us meaning and purpose. The Lord is our Shepherd.
By using this image of a shepherd, Jesus assures us that we can place our trust in him. There is a tenderness and compassion in him, and a love so great that he was willing to lay down his life for his flock. He knows us and cares for us as a shepherd knows and cares for the sheep of his flock. As the shepherd knows his sheep by name, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, knows us each of individually, by face, by name. He wants to establish a direct and personal relationship of intense love with each one of us.
We say that Jesus is the Good Shepherd but are we good sheep? You see, good sheep know their need for a shepherd. They seek to know the shepherd. They know what the shepherd has done for them, and they are filled with gratitude. To belong to the spiritual flock of Jesus is to hear his voice. This means much more than simply reading or hearing about Jesus. Such information is always helpful, but the decisive moment comes when we go beyond external testimony and begin to discover Jesus at the centre of our lives, and we enter into a personal relationship with him.
Jesus also says that his sheep listen to his voice and follow him. This would have made so much sense to the people of first century Palestine who would have been familiar with the intimate relationship between a shepherd and his sheep. The sheep would have responded to the voice of their particular shepherd even when there were competing shepherds’ voices calling when the sheep of different flocks were mixed together. Sheep would have been pooled in a communal enclosure in the evening, and in the morning the shepherds would have separated the sheep again just by calling their own sheep.
Think of the competing voices in today’s world. There is so much busyness and noise. There are so many voices making demands on us and enticing us. How do we recognise the voice of the Good Shepherd speaking to us, teaching us, and calling us? Well, we hear the voice of Jesus, the Good Shepherd in the reading of the Scriptures, in the teachings of the Church and its pastors, in the Mass, and we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in our inner voice, our conscience, and in quiet reflection. This is not easy; it takes and openness and discipline, especially in our noisy world.
Pope Francis often used to say that priests need to have the smell of the sheep. Of course, he meant that priests are to insert themselves into the lives of their people, to know them, be close to them, and support them. Pope Francis was challenging priests to be like the Good Shepherd to their people. The people must get a glimpse of Jesus in their priests. This has been illustrated in the stories and photographs that have been emerging of Pope Leo XIV working as a missionary and bishop in Peru, where he lived among the people and served them humbly. Photos of him on horseback visiting villagers in the mountains, and in wellington boots visiting his flock in a time of flood, and others of him serving food in soup kitchen, show a shepherd deeply connected to his people.
As we enter more deeply into this relationship with Jesus our Shepherd, we acknowledge that Jesus uses priests to concretely care for his people. Jesus calls us to live as families and Christian communities, in which we are served and nourished by the preaching and sacraments given to us by priests.
This Sunday we are invited to be good sheep. We are invited to enter into an intimate Easter relationship with the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for us, and who leads us to the pastures of eternal life.
