4th Sunday of Easter - The Voice of the Shepherd

Location: Basilica of Saint Francis Xavier (Dyersville, IA) – 7 a.m. Sunday Mass

                Saint Paul Catholic Church (Worthington, IA) – 9 a.m. Sunday Mass

Date: Sunday May 11^th, 2014 (4^th Sunday of Easter, Year A; World Day of Prayer for Vocations)

READINGS:

1^st Reading: Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Resp. Psalm: Ps. 23:1-2a, 3b-4, 5, 6

2^nd Reading: 1 Peter 2:20b-25

Gospel: John 10:1-10

FOCUS: To embrace our vocations means to hand our life over to Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

FUNCTION: Follow Jesus faithfully; do not be afraid where He will lead – it is abundant life. 

            Today marks several important events: first, it is the 4^th Sunday of Easter.  The 4^th Sunday of Easter always stands out because the readings aren’t centered on the Lord’s resurrection, like the rest of the Easter season; instead, we hear the passage from St. John’s Gospel about Jesus as the Good Shepherd; and that’s why the 4^th Sunday of Easter is often called “Good Shepherd Sunday.”  Today is also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations and Mother’s Day. 

          All of these events are very important; however, my homily today will focus more on Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations than on Mother’s Day.  But I haven’t forgotten about Mother’s Day; all the mothers here will get a special blessing after the intercessions, because we love them and want to recognize all their hard work, dedication, and love for their families.

          So what are we to make of a day like today, Good Shepherd Sunday?  It’s a very comforting thought, picturing Jesus as the Good Shepherd; we’ve all seen the images – Jesus is holding a sheep on His shoulders, with a flock of sheep following behind Him.  It’s soothing to think about – shepherds take care of and watch over the flock entrusted to their care; but maybe the analogy seems a little ridiculous – we are not sheep, and maybe it’s kind of insulting to think of ourselves as sheep.  After all, we’re trained by society to be independent, original, our own person, and not just a follower.  So maybe “Good Shepherd Sunday” doesn’t always make a lot of sense to us.  But on the flip side, it’s not easy being a shepherd – the sheep have a mind of their own, and aren’t always interested in following the shepherd’s lead.  Sometimes they wander off where they shouldn’t; they don’t always fall in line; and they don’t always come when they’re called.  Sometimes sheep are stubborn – maybe a little like us, sometimes.  Maybe the analogy isn’t so far off after all.

          Ultimately, the point is more about the person of Jesus than it is about us; yes, we are compared to sheep; and no, that’s not always a flattering comparison.  But the point is that the Lord is looking out for us, watching over us, shepherding the flock of God with a shepherd’s care.  Why?  Because the Lord loves us; we are the Church, His Body; we belong to Him; He ransomed us from sin by shedding His precious Blood and gave us new life by His resurrection.  Today is about Jesus.  But it’s also about us.  It’s about us trusting Him. 

          When I was in college, I got to be an RA or Resident Assistant in the dorms.  Training was always a lot of fun.  We RAs got to hang out with each other a lot and we practiced how we would respond in different scenarios if we had to knock on someone’s room while we were doing our nightly rounds in the residence halls.  Part of our training happened at the Four Mounds ropes course in Dubuque.  Not only was it a way for us to build community with each other, but we also learned to how to work with each other.  The goal was to develop trust with each other, and to know we had each other’s backs – much like a soldier or a police officer might take care of one of their own.          

          One of the activities we did at the ropes course was a “trust fall.”  Some of you may already be familiar with this idea, but some of you may not.  A trust fall is an exercise where one person, with their hands across their chest, stands in front of another person who stands behind them.  Without looking at the person behind, the person in front is supposed to fall backward, trusting that the person behind will catch them and not let them fall to the ground.  Now, if the person standing behind wants to be a practical jokester, they could let the person falling simply fall; however, that would not help to establish trust; just the opposite – the person who was doing the trust fall would grow to distrust the person supposed to be catching.  That didn’t happen among us – whether we did the trust fall or we were the ones doing the catching, we were faithful, so that the trust fall would be a success and a way to develop trust. 

          I think our relationship with the Lord is supposed to be like the “trust fall” exercise that my fellow RAs and I did during our RA training; we are supposed to trust that the Lord is standing behind us, ready to catch us when we fall.  How “good” would a “Good Shepherd” really be if we were falling and He were not there to catch us?  Recognizing Jesus as the Good Shepherd means that we allow ourselves to trust Him.

          We can bet that King David, the author of Psalm 23 (today’s responsorial psalm), did a kind of “trust fall” with the Lord; otherwise he would never be able to say, “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.”  David placed his trust in God.  Psalm 23 has been a source of encouragement for countless Jews and Christians down throughout the ages.  And it should do the same for us.  God will not leave us or abandon us; He will not allow us to fall, even if it seems like we’re falling for a while before He catches us. 

          Embracing our vocation is very similar; it involves trusting in God and putting our lives in His hands; it means that we trust Him to lead us and guide us toward the right path.  To embrace our personal vocation means to hand our life over to Jesus, the Good Shepherd.  It means stepping out on the water, like Peter, trusting that the Lord will allow us to stand on the water.  We must not be afraid.  Right now, the Church needs good men and women to answer the call to follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd, as priests and as consecrated religious men and women.

          It starts at home.  Pray together as a family every night; encourage whatever vocation other family members feel drawn to, but especially the vocations to priesthood and religious life.  Try to follow what Jesus taught – love others like He loved us; turn the other cheek; go the extra mile; forgive over and over again; pray as He taught us to pray; be open to the coming of the Holy Spirit; and be willing to follow where the Spirit leads. 

          Embracing a religious vocation means trusting God and following the path that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, lays out for us; and never forget what He said to us – “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”  Jesus is our Good Shepherd, and He will always lead us to full and abundant life, and finally, to eternal life with God in heaven.                                   

Faithfulness in the Midst of Imperfection - Holy Family 2013

Location: Basilica of Saint Francis Xavier (Dyersville, IA) – 8:30 & 10:30 a.m. Sunday Masses

Date: Sunday December 29^th, 2013 (Feast of the Holy Family)

READINGS:

1^st Reading: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14
Resp. Psalm: Ps. 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
2^nd Reading: Colossians 3:12-21 (OR 3:12-17 {short form})
Gospel: Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

 FOCUS: The Christian family is called to be a “domestic church” where children learn the faith.  

FUNCTION: Make prayer a priority in the home; take an active role in teaching the faith to kids.  

            For many of us, family is very important this time of year.  We all have different families, and maybe some our family gatherings are relatively peaceful, while others are perhaps a bit more contentious.  No family is perfect – not even the family we celebrate today, the Holy Family.  St. Joseph often gets the shortest straw when it comes to describing the imperfection of the Holy Family, because Mary was conceived without sin and Jesus is the Son of God and that leaves poor Joseph, the sinner, with all the blame for the Holy Family’s imperfection J  That’s more of a joke than anything, because actually the Holy Family (like all families) experienced not only the imperfection of family life, but also the imperfection of human life, generally speaking.

          Being an imperfect person – such as we all are – is tough; and being an imperfect person who’s also a member of an imperfect family which is living in an imperfect world is likewise tough.  In every family there are differences of opinion and arguments and resentments and unresolved conflict that build up over time; every family faces some measure of dysfunction because none of us are perfect and there is no such thing as a perfect family. 

          Consider the imperfections of the Holy Family – Mary conceived Jesus (through the power of the Holy Spirit) before she was officially married to Joseph; in the Gospel reading for today, the Holy Family had to retreat to Egypt in order to escape King Herod’s persecution and the slaughter of the Holy Innocents; when Jesus was 12 years old He decided not to return home with Mary and Joseph and instead remained behind in the temple talking to the elders, causing his parents much anxiety; Joseph probably died before Jesus began His public ministry, making Mary a widow and one of the most vulnerable members of society; and when He became an adult, Jesus abandoned his money-making business as a carpenter and instead embraced His vocation to be a poor, homeless preacher; Mary watched her only Son suffer a horrible death by crucifixion at the age of 33; and finally, after His resurrection from the dead, Jesus ascended into heaven and Mary went to live with St. John the Apostle for the rest of her days.

          As you can see, there is all kinds of imperfection present in the life of the Holy Family; they experienced uncertainty about the future, sorrow, anxiety, fear, and so much more; they were a human family, and although we know them now as the Holy Family, they weren’t a perfect family.  And yet, despite all the imperfections they experienced, the Church proposes them to us as a model for Christian family life, not because they were perfect, but precisely because they weren’t perfect and still remained faithful in the midst of it all.

          The Church calls every Christian family to be a “domestic Church.”  That means that the Church envisions the Christian family to be the first and primary setting where children learn to forgive, to share, to respect the property of others, to pray, to worship, and to know God as a loving Father; this is the ideal for every Christian family, although every Christian family struggles to live up to this ideal.

          In describing the family as the Domestic Church, I want to offer a section from the Catechism of the Catholic Church; they are paragraphs 1656 and 1657:  

1656) In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centers of living, radiant faith.  For this reason the Second Vatican Council, using an ancient expression, calls the family the Ecclesia domestica.  It is in the bosom of the family that parents are "by word and example … the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children. They should encourage them in the vocation which is proper to each child, fostering with special care any religious vocation."

1657) It is here that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way "by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity."  Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and "a school for human enrichment."  Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous – even repeated – forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one's life.

          The Christian family is called to be that place where we not only learn that our parents love us, but where we learn that God loves us, too; the Christian family is called to pass on the faith to children by word and example, to foster within each member of the family the God-given vocation unique to that child, and to be the first center of learning for human and Christian virtue. 

          But what does this look like?  As I’ve said before, I do not come from a perfect family; we have many flaws and imperfections in the Diehm family; but I’m thankful that my family tried hard to be a Christian family – we always ate and prayed together before meals as a family, we went to Church together every Sunday as a family, Mom and Dad always came in, said a prayer at our bedside, and tucked us in every night, and they made financial sacrifices so that my sisters and I could all receive a Catholic education.  I’m positive it all helped lay the foundation for me embrace my vocation to be a Catholic priest. 

          I’m not saying every family needs to be like mine; but I think we all need to find a way to imitate the example of the Holy Family and embrace the call for our families to become domestic churches, where children grow up knowing that they’re loved by their parents and by God.  Start with regular prayer in the home – pray together before meals and before bed; teach children basic Catholic prayers or pray a Rosary together as a family once a week; and pray for specific family, parish, or community prayer intentions.  Read Bible stories or stories from the Lives of the Saints together as a family.  Encourage children to think about and pray about their vocation, especially a possible religious vocation.  When children have questions about their faith, help them find the answers by reading together a children’s catechism.  But most importantly, take an active role in passing on our Catholic faith to the next generation and remember that Christian parents are the first and primary teachers of their children in the Christian faith.     

          With the help and intercession of the Holy Family, may our families become sanctuaries of faith for our children; and may God continue to bless our families, today and always.