Fourth Sunday of Easter or Good Shepherd Sunday
Acts 13: 14, 43-52;
Apocalypse 7: 9, 14-17;
John 10: 27-30
This is Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocations Sunday, when the Church asks us to look at and reflect on our personal response to Christ's call to do something for Him, to serve rather than be served. May we be generous in our response.
Readings: Paul and Barnabas preach the faith in Antioch, where they are welcomed initially by the locals as visiting celebrities. But as they try to convert the Jewish community, pointing out that salvation is meant to be universal, they are ejected, and go off to preach the good news to the pagans instead.
This is John's vision of the huge number who have achieved salvation. Recognising the persecution which the Roman Christ ians ar suffering, he paints a glorious vision of the rewards for those who remain faithful to Christ.
The imagery of sheep and shepherds in the Gospel would be well understood by the Israelites, many of whom were herdsmen. Sheep were essential for their survival, providing milk, meat, clothing and prosperity. So there was a great mutual dependence between sheep and shepherd, and the O.T. consistently compares God's people as sheep who constantly stray from their shepherd, while the N.T. portrays Christ as the Good Shepherd Who never leaves His flock untended.
This is Vocations Sunday, when we're asked to consider what God is calling us to do for Him. We ask Him to help us all to recognise the voice of the Good Shepherd, and to follow Him; to understand, however, that we are not just sheep who follow, but sharers with Jesus in His mission to seek out and save those who are lost. It's a mission to get involved with the mess and the smells of this world in order to create the world which God wants. So today isn't a day to regret the shortage of priests and religious and to pray that God will plug the gaps. Rather, it's a day for all of us to commit ourselves in such a way that young people from our community will feel that a call to the priesthood or the religious life is a natural and normal way to find happiness and fulfilment in their lives; to be shepherds, and not museum guides!
But whatever God's call, it's addressed to each of us here as members of Christ's body. Through our baptism, as God's holy people, we all have a vocation, so we can't put up our hands and claim, "it's nothing to do with me." God has given all of us his or her own special, unique gifts, to serve the community; and our community will only flourish if we all use our gifts to ensure that we remain vibrant and united in the Lord., whether through school, family, parish or work, in the best way we can.
The early Christian Church and was already faced with the constant threat of violence. Beginning with argument and verbal abuse, it proceeded to threats, assaults, then arrest, imprisonment and finally, death. Paul experienced all of these in an ascending order of increasing hostility throughout the course of his missionary life. On his visit to Antioch in Pisidia with Barnabas in today's reading, initially he is welcomed as a visiting celebrity by the local Jewish community, but he and Barnabas are ex pelled from the city as they preach that salvation isn't meant for them alone, but is universal, for all peoples, Jew and gentile alike.
The Christian community in Rome suffered similar terrible treatment under the Emperor, Nero. They were made scapegoats for a series of disastrous fires which had destroyed a great part of the city. By dealing harshly with the Christians, Nero deflected a lot of uncomfortable rumours and flak about his own part in the fires (sound familiar?). The shock of the violence the Christians experienced prompted John to write and re-assure Jesus' followers who were going through Nero's great persecution, that all would eventually be well, because God would wipe away every tear from their eyes.
It was winter in the Temple, and a crowd was firing questions at Jesus. In reply He speaks about the shepherd who takes wonderful care of his sheep. All went well until He claimed that "the Father and I are one," whereupon the crowd grabbed rocks to stone Him for blasphemy because they immediately recognised that He was claiming to be God.