4th Sunday of Easter Year A Good Shepherd 2026

A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. (Ga 10,10)

Peter tells us that we were once like sheep going astray. Not occasionally lost but habitually wandering. Yet now that we have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of our souls through the initiative of Jesus, his pursuit of us and through his grace.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter proclaimed without hesitation: "God has made this Jesus both Lord and Messiah." The crowd, pierced to the heart, asked: "What must we do?" The answer was plain: repent, be baptised, receive the Holy Spirit, and join the community of the risen Lord. Large numbers did so that day because they heard a voice they could trust — and it changed everything.

That is precisely what Jesus describes in John's Gospel. "The sheep hear his voice… he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." This is not management. This is not control. This is love made personal — intimate, knowing, and entirely free. Jesus goes ahead of the flock. He does not drive from behind through fear or force. He walks with them, and they follow because they know him.

Augustine understood this deeply. "He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent."  The restlessness of our age — its conflicts, its abandonment of the vulnerable, its hollow leadership — is the ache of a world that has not yet heard, or refuses to hear, the Shepherd's voice. Leaders who drive rather than guide, who demand compliance rather than nurture trust, who flee when the wolves come — these are the hired hands Jesus names plainly. They hold a position, but not a vocation.

Emmanuel d'Alzon, founder of the Assumptionists, burned with the same apostolic urgency. "What does it mean to love Jesus Christ?" he asked. "It means to give everything." The Good Shepherd gives everything — not a fraction, not a strategy, not a carefully managed response — everything, including his life. The staff he carries is not a weapon but a sign: guidance, protection, and the tender reaching-down to lift the fallen. This is authority that comforts rather than crushes, that draws close rather than dominates.

This is the challenge we face as did the crowd at Pentecost: this Gospel is not just about Christ — it is about us. In our families, our communities, wherever we hold influence — we are called to shepherd. To lead by love, not fear. To remain when remaining is costly. To listen before speaking. To protect rather than exploit. To be present, not absent, in the difficult moments.

True leadership is not an occupation. It is a vocation of love. And the Shepherd who calls us into it has already shown us the way — by walking it first, all the way to the cross, and beyond.

By Fr. Thomas O'Brien a.a.