By Fr. Andrew Kelly
FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER — APRIL 29
If Sunday’s gathering is a community of believers, it will see and hear the risen Jesus of Sunday’s Gospel (John 10:11-18): “I am the good shepherd.”
It is the good shepherd who forms the flock into a believing community, then speaks in the Scriptures and feeds the flock from the shepherd’s table.
The community will understand at the soul level the relationship the shepherd has with the community:
“I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”
To “know” in the Scriptures means an intimate personal relationship that leads to self-emptying love. The shepherd gives this “knowledge” so the community can lay down its life as Jesus lays down his life in loving committed obedience to the Father’s command.
Sunday worship is seeing, hearing and believing:
“The liturgy is the image — the sacrament — of this gathering around Christ who gathers his own, nourishes them with his flesh and blood, leads them in the Father’s paths, and speaks to them of other sheep who are not yet of this fold.” (Days of the Lord, vol. 3, Liturgical Press 1993, p. 146.)
(Father Andrew Kelly is a retired priest of the Diocese of Davenport.)
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