If those words sound familiar, it is because they are the first words spoken to the world and to each of us by Pope Leo XIV, elected this past Thursday by the College of Cardinals. A lot has already been said about this man from Chicago, an Augustinian friar, a bishop from Peru, and now the 267th Successor of Saint Peter. But these first words of our new Holy Father struck me precisely because of how they relate to our liturgy today.
This Fourth Sunday of Easter is often called Good Shepherd Sunday, because we always hear from the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John, in which Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd, who knows his sheep, and those sheep hear his voice and follow him to eternal life. In light of this Sunday, and this Gospel, I don’t think it’s accidental that Pope Leo, in his very first words, conveyed to us the peace of the Good Shepherd, the Risen Christ, he who can give a peace the world does not know.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of the Good Shepherd, I usually have the mental image of a painting or statue, of Jesus with sheep around him or with a sheep around his shoulders. These images tend to remind us of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, found in Matthew and also in Luke’s Gospel, when he tells us that a shepherd will leave his flock in search of the one lost sheep until he finds it. And Jesus tells us, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” This passage certainly reminds us of the mercy of the Good Shepherd, who seeks us out when we are lost, who brings us back and reconciles us to our loving Father.
But there is another aspect to the Good Shepherd motif that perhaps we overlook – and that is its connection to the Resurrection. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that his sheep hear his voice and follow him, and he leads them to eternal life. But how does he do this? Eternal life is nothing other than the Resurrection, so to receive eternal life is to share in Jesus’s own risen life. If we put the two images together, then, we arrive at precisely the full picture that Pope Leo gave us in his opening words – the Good Shepherd is the Risen Christ, who seeks us out when we are lost, who calls us to follow him, and who leads us to eternal life.
No doubt Pope Leo when he spoke those words was also mindful of his own new role as the shepherd of the Universal Church. The pope is not the Good Shepherd, but he stands in his place on earth as his Vicar, and he seeks to be a human shepherd with the same heart as the Risen Jesus, and so help us to hear the Lord’s voice calling us to eternal life. But how do we get to eternal life? How does Jesus share his Resurrection with us? Only by also sharing with us his Cross.
Remember in last week’s Gospel, after the Risen Jesus appears to the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, after they have breakfast, Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him. Each time, Peter responds “Yes,” and each time Jesus tells him “Feed my lambs”, “Tend my sheep.” It is only after the third time, after Peter has made up for his three-time denial of the Lord during his Passion, that Jesus then invites Peter to embrace his own future death:
"Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger,
you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;
but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go."
He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.
And when he had said this, he said to him, "Follow me."
“Follow me.” In other words, follow me to the Cross, to death, and through death to my Resurrection. *That* is the voice of the Good Shepherd, and that is the voice that you and I must hear and recognize and follow if we are to receive eternal life.
I think we have a stirring reminder of what this looks like in the very example of our new Holy Father. In the homily at his first Mass, the morning after he was elected, he told the College of Cardinals: “I invite you to reflect on … the blessings that the Lord continues to pour out on all of us through the Ministry of Peter. You have called me to carry that cross, and to carry out that mission…” That mission, yes. But did you catch it? That *cross*. What an awesome responsibility; what a tremendous burden. It is said that when then-Cardinal Prevost realized during the Conclave that he was receiving enough votes to be elected, he dropped his head into his hands. No doubt, he realized the weight of this Cross that was being given to him. Just like the first Peter, Jesus was saying “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my lambs,” “Follow me” – all the way to death, and through death to eternal life. Pope Leo XIV, although he is the same man he was last Wednesday, will never be able to go back to the life he had before. In many ways, his life will now be led and dictated by others – by attending to various tasks and responsibilities that others tell him must be done, by caring for the Universal Church day and night with no breaks, by spending the rest of his remaining days in bearing the Cross and the mission that is the See of Peter. Most likely, this is not something he ever sought for himself, but he has accepted it willingly, because in those few moments in the conclave, he heard the voice of the Good Shepherd calling him, and he knew the Risen Lord was saying, “Follow me.”
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| Pope Leo XIV (Photo Credit, Alessandra Tarantino, AP) |
You and I are also called by the Risen Christ, to follow him – not to take up the Chair of Peter, but to embrace our own crosses with faith and with total abandonment to his will. And ultimately, we are called to be faithful to that which he has given us all the way to death, because that is the only kind of discipleship – the kind that ends with death – that will also lead to everlasting life. It is only by embracing the Cross of Christ, that we throw open our arms to receive his Resurrection. While we wait for that moment in which each of us will be asked to share in that ultimate Cross, there are also lots of little deaths that come along the way, each day, in which the Lord asks us to die to self and follow him. At times, we may drop our head in our hands at what we are being asked to endure or to give up. But as Pope Leo knew, we are not alone. The Good Shepherd always leads us, assuring of his presence and his peace – a peace that comes from acceptance of his will, a peace the world cannot give because it reaches beyond this life.
Friends, let’s keep Pope Leo, the new Peter in Rome, in our prayers. He will need them. Let’s pray that through his ministry, we may also hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, the Risen Jesus. And let us listen closely each day, because Jesus is calling us too – to embrace his Cross, to accept it as our own, and only in this way receive eternal life: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
