Lesson for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

Jesus Is Our Model for Living Life to the Full

My dear brothers and sister, today we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Easter called a Good Sheperd Sunday. Because in the Gospel Jesus called himself as a Good Sheperd. Jesus is the good shepherd for two reasons.

First, because he laid down his life in order to save us, his sheep, from the devil. After original sin, the human race was under a curse. As the Catechism (#407) puts it, "By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired certain domination over man, even though man remains free.

Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals."

Jesus came to break that domination, to reclaim us for himself, and through his grace, to lead us gradually out of our inherited, sinful self-centeredness to the everlasting happiness of self-forgetful love. He didn't have to do this; he chose to, because he cares - he is the good shepherd.

Second, Jesus is the good shepherd because he is faithful to the mission he received from the Father. This mission of carrying out the Father's plan, of obeying the Father's will, consumes Jesus and constitutes in his mind the entire meaning of his life: "This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again... This command I have received from my Father."

Jesus Christ was perfect man; he lived his human life perfectly, and that perfection consisted in focusing wholly on the Father's will, in being passionately faithful to his sonship. To discover and fulfill our own identity as children of God, and so experience life as he created us to live it, both now and in eternity, Jesus invites us to imitate him: "The sheep follow, because they know his voice" (John 10:4).

The voice of Christ, our good shepherd, is his example of fulfilling his life-mission, no matter the cost. We follow him by doing the same.

Christ's Two Advantages

What is our life-mission? For Jesus, it was clear: save the world by fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies and obeying his Father's will up to death on a cross. But Jesus, because he was true God and true man, had two advantages that we don't have.

First, in every situation, he knew with perfect clarity what the Father wanted him to do. He never really had to ask, as we often do, "What is God's will for me right now?" Second, he had more strength than we do to fulfill that will. Because of original sin, we have leaks in our spiritual batteries.

We are attracted by evil, selfishness, laziness, lust, greed, self-indulgence. Our fallen nature has a strong tendency to disobey what God wants us to do, or to rebel against what God sends our way. But Jesus had no leaks in his spiritual batteries.

He did not have a spiritual default setting on self-centeredness, as we do. This doesn't mean that it was always easy for Jesus to do his Father's will - his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane was proof enough of that. But it does mean that his human nature was in better shape than ours. Spiritually speaking, he was like an Olympic athlete, and we are like couch potatoes.

So, Jesus had some advantages over us in the fulfillment of his life mission of saving the world, which makes perfect sense, considering that his mission was much bigger than ours. But because he is our good shepherd, he has given us two supernatural resources to help us overcome our disadvantages.

To the extent that we make good use of these resources, we will be able to experience the meaning and fulfillment that comes from living our life-mission to the full. To the extent that we don't, we won't.

The First Supernatural Resource

The first supernatural resource our good shepherd gives us is the teaching authority of his Church, the Catholic Church. This authority is a light showing the Father's will for our lives, making up for the ignorance we inherited from original sin.

Jesus made a solemn promise that "when the Spirit of truth [i.e., the Holy Spirit] comes he will lead you to the complete truth." He also commanded his Apostles, and in them the Church of all ages, to teach all nations.

This teaching authority is often called the "magisterium," coming from the Latin word for teacher: "magister". It belongs to the pope and the bishops who are in communion with him. And it is the reason why Catholics today believe the same doctrines that Catholics believed five hundred years and a thousand years ago.

Our faith has not been corrupted or lost, even though the Church and the world have suffered so much turmoil through the ups and downs of history. Of course, we need to remember that this teaching authority doesn't apply to everything.

The teaching authority of the Church is guaranteed to be trustworthy only when dealing with the doctrines of our faith: the truths we profess in the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and implications these have for our lives in today's world.

Being Good Sheep

Our good shepherd wants us to experience the meaning and joy that comes from discovering and striving to fulfill our life-mission. That's why he came to earth!

He leads us to the cool waters of Church teaching, a clear, refreshing stream that never stops flowing and is never polluted. He leads us to the rich, grassy meadows of the sacraments, where we can feed on his grace for free, without ever having to worry about famines or droughts.

He truly is our good shepherd. But are we good sheep? Most of us want to be; that's why we are here today. But even if we already are good sheep, without a doubt we can become better sheep, if we make a more responsible and active use of these two supernatural resources that Christ came all the way down from heaven to give us.

Today, as he renews his commitment to us, let's renew our commitment to him, and promise him that this week, we will be better sheep than ever.