4th Sunday in Easter

THE SHEPHERD OF OUR SOULS
From a sermon by St John Henry Newman1
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Our Lord here appropriates to Himself the title under which He had been
foretold by the Prophets. “David My servant shall be king over them” says
Almighty God by the mouth of Ezekiel: “and they all shall have one Shepherd.”
And in the book of Zechariah, “Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and
against the man that is My fellow, says the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd,
and the sheep shall be scattered.” And in like manner St. Peter speaks of our
returning “to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.”

“The good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” In those countries of
the East where our Lord appeared, the office of a shepherd is not only a lowly
and simple office, and an office of trust, as it is with us, but, moreover, an office
of great hardship and of peril. Our flocks are exposed to no enemies, such as
our fidelity to the sheep by encounters with fierce beasts of prey. The hireling
shepherd is not tried. But where our Lord dwelt in the days of His flesh it was
otherwise. There it was true that the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep
– “but he that is a hireling, and whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf
coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees, and the wolf catches them and scatters
the sheep. The hireling flees, because he is a hireling, and cares not for the
sheep.”

Our Lord found the sheep scattered; or, as He had said shortly before, “All
that ever came before Me are thieves and robbers;” and in consequence the
sheep had no guide. “When Christ came and saw the multitudes He was moved
with compassion on them because they fainted, and were scattered abroad as
sheep having no shepherd.”

So was it all over the world when Christ came in His infinite mercy “to
gather in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.” And though for
a moment, when in the conflict with the enemy the good Shepherd had to lay
down His life for the sheep, they were left without a guide, yet He soon rose
from death to live for ever, and said, “He that scattered Israel will gather him,
as a shepherd does his flock.” And as He says Himself in the parable before us,
“He called His own sheep and they follow Him for they know His voice.” So,
on His resurrection, while Mary wept, He did call her by her name, and she
turned herself and knew Him by the ear whom she had not known by the eye.
So, too, He said, “Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me?” And He added, “Follow
Me.” And so again He and His Angel told the women, “Behold He goes before
you into Galilee… go tell My brethren, that they go into Galilee, and there shall
they see me.”

1 Plain and Parochial Sermons. John Cardinal Henry Newman, Ignatius Press, 1987, 00. 1686-87.