This week's message from Fr. Bob

Sunday's Readings:

1st Reading ACTS 2:14A, 36-41
Responsorial Psalm Ps 23: 1-3A, 3B4, 5, 6
Reading 2 1 PT 2:20B-25
Gospel JN 10:1-10

Homily for 4th Sunday of Easter, 2020

Every year, the Gospel Reading on the Fourth Sunday of Easter comes from the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel account.  That entire chapter focuses upon the imagery of sheep and their shepherd.  That’s why the Fourth Sunday of Easter is customarily called “Good Shepherd Sunday”.  But in today’s Gospel Reading, while Jesus does mention “the shepherd of the sheep”, His chief focus lies elsewhere.

Jesus focuses in today’s Gospel Reading upon “the gate for the sheep”.  This focus is emphasized by Jesus in the way He introduces His teaching about the gate.  He begins:  “Amen, amen, I say to you ….”  Here we need to stop and consider this important phrase.

In the Gospel account of St. John, Jesus speaks this phrase—“Amen, amen, I say to you …”—fifty times.  Fifty times Jesus begins an important teaching with this phrase which signals to us just how important the subsequent teaching is.  Jesus means these words to be a red flag.  Jesus doesn’t want us to miss His point.

But in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus twice within the span of just seven verses says, “Amen, amen, I say to you ….”  That’s more like a red cape being waved in front of a bull.  We should consider His point here as so necessary to being His disciple that without hearing and heeding it, we would be lost.

So what is this point that Jesus stresses so strongly in this Gospel Reading? “I am the gate for the sheep.”  This is what Jesus says the second time He powers up His speech with those strong introductory words:  “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep.”  The first time that He uses those introductory words, He’s speaking about the same reality a bit differently:  “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate, but climbs over elsewhere, is a thief and a robber.”  The common thread is “the gate”, which Jesus identifies with Himself.

This is important for you and me, because Jesus is first emphasizing that we need to be members of a flock, and that we need to enter into this flock through the gate that Jesus Himself is. But where does this gate that is Jesus lead? Very often, when we picture the Good Shepherd, we imagine him carrying a single stray sheep on His shoulders.  That’s definitely a consoling image for us when we’re preparing for Confession.  But when Jesus as the Good Shepherd takes us upon His shoulders, where does He carry us back to?  When Jesus returns us “home” through the gate that He Himself is, what is this “home”?

The Good Shepherd carries us through the gate back into the midst of the flock.  Jesus returns the stray to its flock so that all one hundred can graze and dwell together.  This is an image of the Church.  Being a Christian is never just about “me and Jesus”.  As soon as we try to separate love of God from love of neighbor, we will love neither God nor neighbor as He wants, or as He does.  Among the flock of the Church is where God teaches us to mingle our love of Him with our love of neighbor.

Here we see better the importance of the gate.  The gate is an entrance into the life of God’s people, not just into divine life.  That is, the Gate who is Jesus leads not just to deification, but to deification through the Mystical Body of Christ.  The gate that Jesus speaks about in the Gospel Reading is not simply the Pearly Gate leading into Heaven.  We cannot enter through the Pearly Gate into Heaven unless we first enter the Gate into the Church on earth.

This is a chief focus of the Easter Season.  That’s why our First Reading throughout Easter is from the Acts of the Apostles.  The book of Acts is all about the life of the early Church, which is to say, how the first Christians lived a common life as God’s flock, with the Apostles as their earthly shepherds.  God’s flock on earth is His Church, the life of which we live out practically among our parish families.  -Fr. Bob Garrow

Intercessions 

V/ As we rejoice in Christ's victory:
R/ Risen Savior, hear our prayer.

For those who exercise ministry in the Church. May they truly lay down their lives for their flock…R/
 
For those who suffer for doing good and speaking up for the sanctity of life and the balance of justice. May their patient witness be an effective grace before God in the world today…R/
 
For all mothers and grandmothers and those who have been like a mother to us. May God bless and strengthen them and inspire us to greater love by the witness of their love and concerns…R/
 
For our parish community and all who have received the Easter Sacraments, especially for our First Communicants who wait patiently to receive Our Lord. May we respond wholeheartedly to our vocation and recognize that it is a gift from God to be given for his people…R/ 
 
For those who have gone astray like sheep and for those who are walking in a dark valley.  May the Good Shepherd give them courage and lead them beside the restful waters of healing and peace…R/  

For a swift end to the coronavirus pandemic that afflicts our world, that our Risen Savior will heal the sick, strengthen those who care for them, and help us all to persevere in faith...R/

For those who have died, especially Veronica Pawlak, may they live forever with Christ in the glory of the resurrection...R/
 
For the prayers in our book of intercessions, and for those prayers we hold in the silence of our hearts (pause 5 seconds), and for:

Jim Sweitzer, 4:15 Vigil Mass
Margaret Zmudzinski, 8:15 Sunday Mass
The People of the Parish, 10:30 Sunday Mass
 
As we rejoice in Christ's victory…R/ 
 
In company with Mary, the Holy Mother of God, St. Anthony de Padua our patron, and all the angels and saints, in peace…R/

St. Anthony de Padua: Pray for us!