4th Sunday of Easter: Good Shepherd and Vocations Sunday
In John 10, Jesus speaks with intimate tenderness of His relationship with the Father. He places the whole of
His self-sacrifice and self-giving to us, the human race, the “flock of sheep”, in the eternal exchange of love
between Himself and the Father. In some sense, just as His loving surrender to the Father is what identifies Him to the Father
as the Son, so His loving surrender to His sheep identifies Him to us as our Good Shepherd and Our Savior. Put simply: we
are not an afterthought in the intimate life and love of the eternal God. Rather, Jesus assures us that, by the will, by the
command, indeed by the lavish love of His Father, we belong deeply within that life. In the end, it is our only real and lasting
home. We have become His children, His family. The instrument of our insertion into God’s own life is what Jesus describes
no less than five times in today’s Gospel as “laying down His life for His sheep” and taking it up again.
But even before He became man, Jesus “laid down His life” for His Father: for God’s entire inner
mystery of life is a constant exchange of self-surrender and acceptance by all Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Still,
when the Son of God did become man, He “laid down His life” in yet another sense. You will remember the words
of St. Paul:
“Although He was in the form of God, Jesus did not count equality with God as something to hold on to jealously; rather
He emptied Himself and assumed the condition of man” (Phil. 2). You will also recall that at the birth of Jesus, the
first to greet Him were humble shepherds, men who understood the heart of a good shepherd, who could grasp intuitively that
the new-born Savior had somehow already given His life as the Good Shepherd by being born in loving humility.
Jesus speaks today also of His Death and Resurrection. This is the instrument of our being born again,
born immortally. It is vital to understand that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus are not mere individual accomplishments
of a divine hero with no link to ourselves other than by the applause or adulation we might give Him for His courage. Rather,
these great deeds of Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, have a universal impact on the whole of humanity. He is the only Savior;
there is no other Name by which we can be saved from sin and death.
Why, and in what sense, does the death of Jesus destroy our death? To answer this we need to remember that death
is the work of sin and death must be distinguished into physical and spiritual. Since Jesus was sinless, even although He
was physically killed, neither the grave (the abode of physical death) nor hell (the abode of spiritual death) could hold
Him. The Body assumed by Jesus was like a Trojan horse which once inside the city of death routed it by the power of the Triune
God and carried away those awaiting His triumph. Hence those of us who cling to God in faith, hope and charity by being buried
sacramentally with Jesus in baptism, and who try thereafter, with sincerity and perseverance, to live with hearts free from
sin: even though we die, yet shall we live (cf. Jn 11). The Good Shepherd descended into hell to lift up to heaven
those who believed in Him. Is there anything more He could have done for them? Is there anything less He will do for us provided
we sincerely believe in Him with our lives as well as our lips?
Jesus continues to lay down His life and take it up again in other senses. Every time a sacrament is celebrated,
especially the Eucharist, Jesus again and again lays His life on the line: not in the sense that He dies repeatedly, but in
the sense that He gives Himself uninterruptedly for us. And whenever a sacrament is received lovingly and worthily, Jesus
takes up His life again because He draws us each time more deeply into that intimate tenderness of Trinitarian life. Every
time the Word of God is proclaimed during the Liturgy, Jesus again directs His Risen life towards us; and whenever the ears
of our hearts are open and obedient He draws us back into Himself, into His freeing Truth, into His Spirit of love and power
and self-control.
Is this life-giving God of ours limited in the ways He gives life and takes it back? Only in this sense: that
He never takes back life unless it is in order to give more abundant life. He let Lazarus die so as to reveal to all who would
witness it, that He could raise him to life again, a symbol of His own Resurrection and of the final Resurrection of us all
(Jn 11). Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His faithful (Ps 115). He may take some measure of life from someone
by allowing sickness; yet in that sickness the one afflicted may understand it was the Lord’s way of drawing their heart
to Him and away from things in this life that had captured their heart. Here is the Good Shepherd, looking for a wandering
heart and using the means He must for that heart to be able to reach out to Him and be lifted up. And remember: Jesus Himself
suffers in His Heart not only the pain of the fact that our heart wanders from Him. He actually suffers the pain of the wandering
heart itself; and He suffers the pain that that same heart must go through to let itself be found by Him. Is this not the
Good Shepherd laying down His life continually in the aching hearts of so many? Of the young man who is afraid of life and
love? Of the middle-aged woman who finds her dreams have evaporated and her body has become a burden? Of the lonely old man
who can barely contain the regrets of his selfish past and weeps quietly afraid of dying alone in his cold bed? The Good Shepherd
seeks out each such pitiable heart and reaches out to take it up again, into the confident love, the untold dreams of joy,
the warm, consoling and selfless love of the Heart of God.
Christ Jesus needs hearts in love with His own and like His own who will give His life and love and give their
lives and love for His sheep. He needs especially priests and Bishops who will live and die for Him because their own hearts
have become as His. No man can dare make such a claim for himself. Rather, most men are more likely to be akin to the hired
man in the Gospel who runs from the wolf or, worse still, himself becomes the wolf. Jesus is pained as He speaks of the cowardice
and the self-serving ways of many of the religious establishment of His time - and perhaps, alas, also of our own time. For
a self-serving coward to become a good shepherd, The Good Shepherd Himself must call him, and He will call men
whose hearts He knows have the potential to be like His own.
There is no doubt that the Good Shepherd, who continues to lay down His life for us, also continues to call men
to the diaconate, to the priesthood and to the episcopacy. But we must pray that His voice will be clearly heard in the depths
of their souls. We must pray not just for vocations as if they fell from the sky. Rather we must direct our praying minds
to all the contexts in which a vocation might first be heard and nurtured and pray that these become enabling, empowering
contexts.
It is difficult for a boy or a young man to hear Christ’s call if his family is not living according to
Christ and His Church. We must pray for strong Catholic family life, open and generous towards God’s gift of children,
God’s gift of mutual and lasting fidelity, God’s gift of health and strength to work for the means to sustain
that family. Families themselves must pray and get over the false and stupid embarrassment about praying together which is
insinuated into their homes by the egocentric and anti-religious ethic of much of modern life. Parents must neither force
nor discourage their sons if they want to enter seminary; certainly, at home it should not be unfamiliar to hear talk about
vocations, and if a son wants to try, then encourage him.
I mentioned the seminary. We need to pray for our Bishops that they may prayerfully and wisely discern the candidates
they admit to seminary and not fall prey simply to the need for numbers. We need to pray that our Bishops themselves be strong
and attractive examples of Christ the Priest, the Prophet and the King. We also need to pray for our seminaries; and I don’t
mean money. We need formation staff who are themselves exemplary, joyful, genuine father-like men who seek to form those Christ
has entrusted to them into images of Christ the priest. We need to pray that the full integrity of the faith of the Church
will be taught by them with loving conviction, without compromise and without arrogance. We need to pray that seminary superiors
be expert enough in human and spiritual matters to help young men cope with the challenges of celibacy and obedience, of daily
prayer and devout sacramental ministry. When a newly ordained priest is sent to a parish, we need to pray that his relationships
with the other priest or priests, with the deacons, with all the faithful will always be guided by a Good Shepherd heart.
When problems come, as indeed they must, he will then be ready to bear them and overcome them because He is in love with Christ,
in love with the Church and ready to lay down His life for both.
So, please, today as we rejoice at the tender love of Jesus the Good Shepherd for each one of us, and as we keep
painfully in mind the sorrows of the Church occasioned in recent times by the sad failures of some clergy, we need to widen
and deepen our perception of what it means to pray for vocations, especially to the priesthood. Your prayers, fervent and
persistent, will restore hope, confidence and joy to many in the Church. The gates of hell will not prevail: we know that.
But we also want the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem to be seen shining brilliantly and wide open in the Church for all the sheep
of the Lord’s flock. We, your priests, need your help to do that; we need more brother priests to reassure us and give
us new heart. Pray the Good Shepherd for us that we may not lay down our lives in vain and that the abundant life and love
of His tender Heart may come to you through our own.
Msgr. Peter Magee
St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Washington DC
May 11th, 2003, 10.00 am Mass
