Father Dan Juelfs
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2024

“I am the Good Shepherd” 

As we begin this third week of our Easter, or fourth week I should say, of our Easter celebration, we get a change of theme. The first three weeks — Easter Sunday and the second and the third Sundays — we had a Gospel account of Jesus’ appearance to his disciples. Reassuring them and reaffirming their faith in who he was and that he did actually rise from the dead and taking the opportunities to strengthen their faith. 

This week, and the next week, we have a different theme if you will. More not appearances but descriptions of who Jesus is. Who he wants us to know, what he wants us to know. Images that begin with the phrase “I am.” A phrase that was certainly familiar to the Jewish people because that was the way that Jesus or the Father introduced himself to Moses at the time of the burning bush when Moses asked to tell the people, “who gave me this message,” and the Father’s response was “I am” sent you to them.

In using that expression, Jesus is proclaiming his relationship with the Father. His relationship with the Father while at the same time he’s describing his purpose, his place on earth. Jesus is the one whom the Father has sent to guide and protect his people. “I am your God, and you are my people,” is a phrase that we heard so often from the prophets. Different times, different prophets in the Old Testament history, but it was a reminder that God kept giving to his people no matter how often they failed. “I’m still your God, and you’re still my people.” That was a common phrase, a common expression coming to us through the prophets. 

Jesus proclaims that just as the Father knows his Son, and the Son knows the Father, so also the Shepherd knows his sheep and the sheep know him. That Jesus speaks of that kind of comparison, that kind of connection between the relationship that he has with the Father and the relationship that he has also with us, with the ones who are called to follow him. 

Jesus also makes a comparison between a Good Shepherd, one who is willing to give his life for his sheep, and one who is not the Good Shepherd but the one who is simply a paid employee. One who works, in a sense for himself, not for the sheep. Jesus makes that kind distinction as he proclaims that this is who he is, the Good Shepherd.  

In our second reading that we heard today we find another expression concerning the relationship between God and us. The author talks about, “We are God’s children.” John, in his first letter, reminds us that we’re God’s children now. He said what will happen, what we will become, we don’t know him, but now we are God’s children. And that again establishes a kind of unique, a very special kind of relationship between ourselves and God — how God sees us and how we’re called to see God as those who God has chosen and calls his own, his own children. John reminds us that there’s more but we don’t know yet what that’s going to be. But we’re called to be patient, to wait, to keep ourselves in God’s presence and wait for the fulfillment of those promises. 

These weeks of our Easter celebration are really kind of a continuous revelation about who God is through the person of Jesus and who we are and who we can become. As Peter proclaims in the first reading “there is no salvation by anyone other than Jesus.” No other way to be saved. 

During the Easter Season, we’re called to renew that relationship. To be reminded of it. To be reminded of God’s action and to renew our own response to it. To remind ourselves who our God is and who we are, the children of God.