Year A
Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, we greet the risen Christ, the Good Shepherd, and listen attentively to his voice. Jesus is the gate through which we pass into the Father's sheepfold. The Good Shepherd has come so that we may have life and have it to the full. On this World Day of Prayer for Vocations, we pray that each of us may follow where Christ is leading us.
Acts 2:14, 36-41
In part of Peter's Pentecost discourse, Luke outlines the pattern of conversion to Christianity. Peter proclaims the good news of the risen Christ. Jesus is both Lord and Christ. Those who have ears to hear decide to change their lives, to be baptised, to receive the Holy Spirit, and so enter into the community of the living.
2 Peter 2:20-25
This reading touches on practical aspects of the Christian life. Christ in His suffering is the pattern for Christian suffering. The suffering Christ carried our sins on the cross, fulfilling His role as the suffering servant. Having gone astray like sheep, Christ has healed us by His wounds and called us to live in holiness. And we are not alone. Christ is the shepherd and guardian of our souls.
John 10:1-10
Jesus is the true shepherd and the true gate. It is the true sheep who listen to the call of the Good Shepherd and enter into the sheepfold through Christ, the true gate. Jesus is robust about His role, warning us about the thieves and brigands who try to enter the sheepfold by another way.
On this Sunday we tend to focus on vocations to the priesthood and the religious life, both vital callings in the Church. But all of us, individually and as communities have a pastoral, shepherding role, drawing people to the risen life of Christ celebrated in the sacraments of the Church.
The ‘Good Shepherd’ note of this Sunday is carried through two of the three ‘orations’ (Collect and Prayer after Communion) of this Sunday’s Mass. It is strongly represented in the Second Reading: ‘The shepherd and guardian of your souls.’
The Collect directs our attention both to the Easter Mystery which we are still celebrating, but also toward the Ascension, coming in a fortnight’s time. The prayer is structured round a contrast. Jesus, the ‘strong’ Shepherd, goes ahead of his ‘humble’ flock, to the joys of heaven.
We might be reminded of the Easter Vigil Gospel, where the angel says that ‘He goes ahead of you to Galilee.’ The Shepherd leads the flock, but leading is also a challenge to listen and to follow (see the Gospel reading). We are in fact not sheep, but disciples.
The Prayer after Communion addresses the Father as ‘kind Shepherd’ – something that might bring to mind Ezekiel’s imaging of the Covenant to come as a shepherding of a new flock(cf.Ezk.34:11-31). Here the goal is eternal life conceived as ‘pasture’ (echoes of Psalm 22/23 here) to which the Father leads us.
The Prayer over the Offerings uses the term ‘paschal mysteries’ to link the celebration of Mass with the dying and rising of Christ, making these events a present reality, whose work of renewing us is constant, contemporary and ongoing.
A good choice of Preface for today might be Easter Preface 2 ‘New life in Christ.’
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
