Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (C)

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which is also called ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’ because every year on this Sunday we hear a Gospel in which Jesus casts Himself as shepherd of the flock: “They hear my voice,” Jesus says in tonight’s Gospel, “I know them, and they follow me.”

Jesus not only knows us, He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves! He calls each and everyone one of us by name. And if we respond to His grace, then we recognize the sound of His voice, and we come to know and follow Him alone.

Now to be honest, much of this could be said of all shepherds. Shepherds can tell their sheep from the sheep of another flock, and the sheep of his flock can in fact recognize the voice of their shepherd from all others and they follow only him.

But Jesus goes on to say: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” Now this is a whole new level of care for the flock! Jesus, the Good Shepherd, calls the flock to Himself and gives us everlasting life. The sheep of Jesus’ flock will never die!

Thus, Jesus is the Good Shepherd not only because He knows His sheep, and His sheep know and follow Him, but because He gives His sheep everlasting life. And how does he do that? Jesus willingly lays down His life to save the sheep. And this is, of course, above and beyond the call of duty for any normal shepherd. Shepherds certainly defend their flocks from danger, but they don’t normally die to defend them!

In laying down His life, Jesus is not only the Good Shepherd, He is Himself the Lamb of God whose blood sets us free – the lamb of the Passover in Exodus. These two images, the Lamb and the Shepherd, are, in the end, absolutely inseparable and they come together beautifully in our second reading from St. John’s Book of Revelation.

St. John says that the Lamb of God “stands at the center of God’s throne” and the Lamb Himself shepherds the great multitude, the flock, which comes “from every nation, race, people and tongue.”

We can say that Jesus is the Good Shepherd by virtue of the fact that He is the Lamb of God – He has paid for the undisputed right to lead us, precisely by laying down His life to save us and giving us a share in His eternal life.

Because this Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, today also marks World Day of Prayer for Vocations to the Priesthood. We recall today that God promised, through the Prophet Jeremiah, to always give us shepherds after His own heart.

We find ourselves praying that more young men will answer God’s call to the priesthood, exactly at a time when the Church and the priesthood are enduring a time of great trial. Though much has been done to ensure the safety of young people in the Church, we are again experiencing a wave media scrutiny of abuse cases perpetrated by priests in previous decades.

It is a time of disappointment, and embarrassment, and even anger for many lay faithful and for so many thousands of good and holy priests. So it is perhaps, an appropriate time to raise a crucial question, first raised years ago by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner: “Why would a modern man want to become or remain a priest today?”

Rahner begins to answer his own question by saying that it’s not about “the great works of the church in the service of justice and peace, the great universities and the great movements and programs.” Instead, he says, it’s because priests have “a readiness for unselfish service, a readiness for prayer . . . and a calm acceptance of death in whatever form it may come, in total dedication to the following of Christ crucified.”

There are so many examples of priests who have faithfully lived this total dedication to Christ crucified – who have been good shepherds after His own heart:

Fr. Emil Kapaun, was a priest of Wichita, Kansas and an Army chaplain in the Korean War. Captured and held in a prison camp in the North, he stole food from the commissary at night, knowing full well that he would be shot on sight if discovered, so that he could feed his starving men. He carried to the latrine, men who had dysentery and cleaned them himself. When depression gripped many of the men in his unit, he tried everything to keep them positive and hopeful – he even deliberately said things to make them angry knowing that the experience of anger would bring them out of themselves. Eventually he himself contracted phlebitis and the guards took him away to die. The last thing his men heard was Fr. Kapaun assuring the guards that he held no animosity or hatred for them.

Fr. Stanley Rother was a priest of Oklahoma City and a missionary in Guatemala. He translated the Bible into the native language of the area and built a hospital and parish for the people he served. He carried on his ministry even as other priests were murdered by government forces. Told that his name was on the death list, he was urged to return to Oklahoma, but he stayed in the U.S. only for a short time. Knowing that it would mean certain death, he returned to Guatemala, telling his parents: “The shepherd can’t run. I have to go back.” Two months later, in July of 1981, gunmen burst into his home and shot Fr. Rother twice in the head.

Of course, we don’t have to limit ourselves to these very dramatic stories of martyrdom. We can also think of any number of priests, any number of ways that priests we know have laid down their lives, often in obscure and hidden ways, so that the People of God can have life to the full:

Think of priests who daily visit hospitals, often into the wee hours of the night, keeping vigil at the bedside of death. Think of priests who serve as prison chaplains, proclaiming over and over the Gospel of forgiveness to those the world deems unforgivable. Think of priests in parishes, who work daily to awaken in even a few people a small spark of faith, hope and charity. Think of priests in residence halls, who comfort the homesick freshman, and counsel the senior discerning their future, and stay up all night caring for and worrying about the sophomore who’s made some really bad decisions with alcohol.

“Why would a modern man want to become or to remain a priest today?”

“The deepest and most enduring reason why a man wants to become and remain a priest is the person of Jesus Christ. In the depths of every authentic priest echoes the Lord’s question to Peter: ‘Do you love me more than these?’ If our love for Jesus Christ is truly genuine, then there must stir within us the desire to be like him. As St. Augustine said, the essence of religion is to imitate Him whom we adore: to love is to be like.”

To be a priest is to be a shepherd in the model of Christ, who was also inseparably the Lamb of God. Like Christ, priests are only shepherds because they are also lambs of sacrifice who lay down their lives out of love for God’s flock.

It is only because this is true that the stories of abuse by a small percentage of priests have had such a wide-reaching and devastating effect. The guilt of these abusers is indeed all the greater because they so terribly violated their high calling to be shepherds after His own heart. They were instead wolves in sheep’s clothing; making members of their flock victims instead of becoming victims themselves in imitation of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, the Priest and the Victim.

But none of this scandal, as terribly real as it is, can negate the essential truth at the heart of the priesthood. And this is why I firmly believe that this is a great time to be a priest. Yes, even good and holy and innocent priests are undergoing a moment of trial and humiliation. But that means it is a time for us, like the Apostles in Acts, to give thanks that we have been counted worthy to suffer for Christ and His Church.

It is a time for men to step forward who are willing to be martyrs – men like Emil Kapaun and Stanley Rother – men who are willing to spend their lives as witnesses to the love of the Good Shepherd – men who will humbly and generously embrace the mystery of the Cross so that their sacrifices, large and small, can bring life to the men and women they serve and lead.

There are men with that kind of love, and courage, and dedication here tonight, in this chapel and across this campus. We pray that more of them will hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, and answer the call to love Him by following Him and imitating Him as priests.

This homily is based on, and includes quotations from, a speech given by retired Archbishop John Quinn to the National Federation of Priests’ Councils, Houston, Texas, April 13, 2010.