4th Sunday of Eastertide Year A 2023

 

4^th. Sunday Eastertide (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:14, 36-41; 1^st. Peter 2:20-25; John 10:1-10)

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Dear People of God, on this Sunday of the Good Shepherd there is something of particular interest for us in today’s reading taken from the first letter of St. Peter, because Peter, you will remember, was specially commissioned by Jesus – because of his unique love for Jesus – to ‘feed His lambs and His sheep’.  In other words, Peter was chosen and Personally urged and encouraged to be himself a good shepherd for Jesus’ flock in the likeness of Jesus Himself.

Those Christians to whom Peter was writing were only recent converts and he was seeking to encourage, strengthen, and guide them in the ways of Christ; and I want to draw your attention to the way he sets about it.

 You had gone astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.

 Thus Peter congratulated those converts, and rejoiced over the salutary change in their lives.  However, Peter did that in order to confirm them in what he evidently considered to be of primary importance for new-born Christians and Catholics to learn, namely, that ordinary ideas of morality were not good enough for them:

           What credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated,  you endure it                 with patience?

 You new Christians, who are still rejoicing in the wonder of your conversion, must, Peter said, realise that though you are now suffering for your faith, Christ Himself also suffered, moreover, He suffered for us, which tells us that our suffering is not just to be passively endured, we must try to embrace it with patience and for a good purpose, as He did:

             Leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.  To this you were                  called.

Peter then ended his proclamation of the saving Gospel of Jesus, by adding:

 But if, when you do what is right and suffer, you take it patiently, this is  commendable before God;

thereby commending the manner in which he, Peter himself and his fellow Apostles, had themselves suffered for Jesus:

 They left the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonour for the sake of the Name.  (Acts 5:41)

Such was the way the early Church was built up: Christians were taught to live for righteousness and encouraged to face up the difficulties of their personal situation with their eyes firmly fixed on the historic Person of Christ who suffered and died to redeem us from the sin which is in the world and of the world.  In such teaching Peter was being absolutely faithful to Jesus Who had said to His disciples (John15:19):

         If you were of the world, the world would love its own.  Yet, because you are not          of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Isn’t it strange then, that in response to today’s world-wide persecution of Catholic and Christians, we hear few Church messages of whole-hearted Christian support, encouragement, and guidance.  Far too often we hear mere appeals for peace to people who have no interest in such appeals expressing human sympathy for the suffering, as if such anonymous human sympathy was the best that could be offered, indifferently, to all, whether they be pagans, religious, Muslims, Jews, free-thinking Christians, or Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

The nascent Church, however, knowing perfectly her role and function, proclaimed and bore witness to the Gospel of Jesus while fully acknowledging that only God Himself spoke in the secret depths of the hearts of those who listened, and that those He thus chose, He then gave to Jesus (John 6:44):

            No one can come to Me unless he Father Who sent Me draw him. 

 In today’s first two readings Peter is so very confident in offering the Jesus he proclaims as the sublime Example and supreme Reward for all those seeking God and salvation:

     Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the             forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit.   For the     promise is made to you and to your children, and to all those far off, whomever         our God will call.

And we were also given an example of Peter endevouring to be the  ‘good shepherd’ Jesus wanted and expected him to become, by showing us that Peter had no qualms or hesitation whatsoever in offering Catholics under persecution not mere sympathy but Gospel encouragement and help by exhorting them to face up to their trials with patience, confidence, and courage: 

Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His footsteps.

Too often today public statements by prominent servants of Mother Church seem to be over-much politicised, serving primarily to cause no trouble rather than to preach and proclaim Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and to offer the encouragement of Christian and Catholic teaching for suffering disciples of Jesus in need of that spiritual backbone and moral strength which can only be bestowed by a sure, ‘Holy Spirit based’ hope for now, and Jesus’ Personal promise of eternal fulfilment to come.

After rising from the dead in glory Jesus did not live again here on earth.  He did, indeed, show Himself to His intimate disciples several times, but on all those occasions He appeared as One Who had ascended, that is, as One already living at the righthand of the Father in heaven.  He had risen in order to ascend, because the life in which He rose, the life He offers to share with us, was, is, heavenly life, eternal and glorious.  Those who imagine they can live as good Christians and Catholics while aiming no higher than earthly happiness and earthly fulfilment are, at the best, like those fireworks we call ‘damp squibs’: made to be rockets, they do indeed burn when their match is applied, but they find it hard to lift off, and if they should begin to rise they go up only for a few fretful yards before spluttering and flopping down to ground again, with no further possibility  of fulfilling  their promise.

Those whom Peter addressed his message, on the other hand, were true disciples of Jesus, under no illusions that the world which had crucified their Lord might in some way come to love them:

If you were of the world, the world would love its own.  Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore, the world hates you.

However, they did know, and whole-heartedly accepted, that thanks to Jesus’ Death and Resurrection, they were no longer helpless under the power of sin.  They rejoiced In the conviction that they could now overcome the world’s deceit, in and with Jesus Who conquered sin and death by rising in the glory of the Holy Spirit, and Who now offers to all who will believe in Him and in His saving proclamation of the heavenly Father’s love, a share in the presence and power of His Most Holy Spirit (John 16:33):

     These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.  In the world         you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

Peter was very realistic in his address to the new converts of Asia Minor, and he not only warned them of the difficulties they would have to face, but even said it was their vocation, their calling, not only to suffer in such a way but also to triumph over their trials in the strength of Christ:

     What credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?          But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable             before God.  For to this you were called, because Chris when He was reviled, did      not revile on return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed                 Himself to Him Who judges righteously.

Speaking in this way Peter was preparing and strengthening them for whatever might arise; and we ourselves – aspiring to be sincere believers in and true disciples of Jesus – also find his words, after nearly two thousand years, still refreshingly pertinent and inspiring, oppressed as we are by the sin that is not only blatantly rampant in the world around us, but also visible in our own society, and even to be found skulking in our very own selves.  

Saint Peter makes very clear to us why we have felt the need to come here today, to meet Jesus where He promised to be with us, that is, in His Church, our Mother.  We have come wanting to be healed by Jesus, to learn from Him, and to be empowered by His Spirit, that we might, by overcoming the sin-of-the-world in ourselves, bear authentic witness to Him and to the wondrous love of the Father Who sent Him among us to save us.

 We know, however, that our healing will be a lifelong process, for the Holy Spirit of Jesus must open up our most secret selves so that, penetrating to the core of our being, He might form us in all truth and sincerity into a likeness of Jesus.  God needs to temper His power to our frailty with the result that the Holy Spirit working in us can only change us gradually.  Moreover, the Spirit, having begun to work His wonders in us, has then to encourage us personally to commit ourselves to following His influence and guidance with confidence, trust, and courage; and that too is difficult and takes time, because we instinctively want to walk with others, to be comforted and appreciated by our fellows; and too often we find ourselves unable to hear or understand when the Spirit of Jesus would lead us along a way that is not level, well sign-posted or well-trodden, by others.

Today, therefore, dear People of God, let our Easter rejoicing be both whole-hearted and truly profitable for ourselves and for Mother Church; let us make it our delight to proclaim Jesus as our Saviour and our Risen Lord, our whole confidence and sure hope; and as we do that, let us renew our admiration of and prayers for all those saints in Mother Church suffering for their faithfulness to Jesus and His Church.  With them, let us bolster up our hearts as we listen carefully and trustfully to Jesus’ words:

Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.  I am the door.  I anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

Jesus is indeed the Way, the firstborn from the dead; He is the Truth which alone can satisfy and fulfil our deepest longings; He is life itself, in the fulness of all its possibilities and divinely eternal.  Through faith in Jesus we have entered into the flock of God, and Jesus like a good shepherd leads His flock to nourishing pastures.  Having conquered the sin of the world, and having been raised – still in our likeness – to new and eternal life in the Spirit of Glory, Jesus is able to fulfil what He promised (John 10:29-30):

     I give them eternal life, they shall never perish neither shall anyone snatch them         out of My hand.  My Father, Who has given them to Me is greater than all; and         no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.  I and My Father are one.

Eastertide is a time of supreme joy for all Christians, so let us learn from Peter who, inspired by the Spirit of Jesus, spoke words of truth that pierce the fog of worldly deceits around us, and our own self-indulgent fancies:

             Be saved from this perverse generation!