Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday

May 11, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Acts 13:14,43-52
Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 5
Revelation 7:9, 14b-17
John 10:27-30

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one”.

Jesus wants to establish a relationship with His friends that points to His own relationship with the Father: a relationship that is even closer than friendship, an intimate communion in Divine and selfless love. To express His teaching about this relationship of communion, Jesus uses the image of the shepherd with His sheep: He calls them, and they recognize His voice, they respond to His call, and follow Him.

This parable is very beautiful, but perhaps we have developed a familiarity with it that we have not listened closely enough to understand and to receive it. The mystery of the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd, is evocative: only think that from our mother’s womb we learn to recognize her voice and that of our father; the recognition of the voice and its significance is even pre-verbal.

As Pope Benedict XVI once observed, “Jesus’ voice is unique! If we learn to distinguish it, He guides us on the path of life, a path that goes beyond even the abyss of death.” We learn to recognize the voice of Jesus by listening in silence. Silence is so essential to our being able to recognize the voice of God, just as silence is so alien to the noisy culture of this world, which demands to be heard but refuses to listen and therefore is unwilling to be led by the Good Shepherd.

Christ’s parable of the Good Shepherd speaks to us not only of the completely trustworthy guidance and commands of Christ and the Communion that He offers us, the Good Shepherd who will never lose us, but also of our own responsibility as the sheep of His flock to listen, to pay attention, and to help each other to recognize the Shepherd’s voice to follow and to be led by Him. It is only on this path that we can never ultimately perish and be saved from preferring our own demands; the demands that ultimately lead us to yield to sin and to be snatched away by the wolf and his spiritual extortion.

The vocation of the priest, of the bishop, and even of the Pope, is to first be a sheep who then is entrusted by Christ sacramentally with the ministry of being a shepherd after His own heart, who always reveals even in his frail humanity the one true and good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. The vocation of the priest is to live His life and serve God in a way that quietly and transparently enables the sheep to hear the evocative voice of Christ, not just His words, and to see His love for His sheep.

Yesterday, our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, reminded us of the essential role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of Our Mother of Good Counsel, in hearing the voice of her Son as he entrusted his papal ministry to her care. He wrote to her at the Shrine of Gennazano, “Still in the early days of my pontificate, I felt the duty and a deep desire to draw near to Genazzano, to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel, who throughout my life has accompanied me with her maternal presence, with her wisdom, and with the example of her Son, who is always the center of my faith: ‘The Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ Thank you, Mother, for your help — accompany me in this new mission.”

On this Sunday, which we Americans celebrate as Mother’s Day, may we pray with Pope Leo this prayer to our Blessed Mother, that we may rely on her intercession and example of listening to her Son and following Him as good sheep loved and in Communion with Him, the Good Shepherd.