Homily for the
4th Sunday of Easter
April 30, 2023
1 Pet 2: 20-25
Psalm 23
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx, N.Y.
“Christ suffered for you, leaving you an
example that you should follow in his footsteps” (1 Pet 2: 21).
The 4th Sunday of Easter is celebrated every year as Good Shepherd Sunday, and because of that, as World Day of Prayer for Vocations. For, as St. Peter writes, we “had gone astray like sheep,” and “the shepherd and guardian of [our] souls” (2:25) guides us, as Ps 23 says, “in right paths” and leads us “in the dark valley … with [his] rod and staff” toward a great table (23:3-5), the heavenly banquet. That banquet is foreshadowed in the Eucharist.
Christ
leads us by his example—life, death, and resurrection. This is our fundamental vocation: to be Christians, disciples of Jesus in life
and in death, to be “the humble flock [reaching] where the brave Shepherd has
gone before” (Collect). The Good
Shepherd recalls us to the safe paths that will bring us to “dwell in the house
of the Lord” (23:6).
Each
of us lives his or her fundamental Christian vocation in a particular way—a
particular calling. For most, that’s the
vocation of Christian marriage: to live
holy lives as faithful spouses so long as both shall live, and be open to the
gift of procreating new life. Christ’s
Church very much needs solid, holy Christian marriages that mirror the spousal
relationship between Jesus and his bride, the Church. If marriage is blessed with children, parents
become good shepherds guiding and safeguarding their offspring.
Some
live their Christian vocation as singles, either not choosing a spouse or becoming
a widow or widower. Singles are called
to follow Christ by living holy lives of service to the Church and to the wider
human family.
Christ
calls some Christians to follow him in what we often think of when we hear the
word vocation, as deacons, priests, or consecrated women and men. You know what a deacon is, what a priest is;
consecrated persons vow themselves to God in a religious order—religious
sisters, nuns, monks, brothers, and some priests like Jesuits, Franciscans, and
Salesians—or in some other form of consecrated life.
ome other form of consecrated life: In recent years the Church has revived something
that flourished in the early centuries of Christianity, consecrated virgins,
single women who live in the world but are vowed to Christ in perpetual virginity as
brides
of Christ; they’re consecrated by the diocesan
bishop according to a liturgical rite and spend their lives in prayer
and works of service and mercy according to their particular spiritual
gifts.[1]
Since
the beginning of the 20th century there have also been groups called secular
institutes, men or women, lay persons or clergy, who live the evangelical
counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the world and for the world, not
in a community like nuns or monks, belonging to God and reaching out to their
neighbors, for the sake of sanctifying the world.[2]
On
this day of prayer for vocations, we pray that every Christian may realize that
she or he is called to a holy life following in the footsteps of our Savior,
and that each one may discern the particular calling, the particular “right
path,” intended for her or him by Christ our Good Shepherd, who came to us that
we “might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
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