Homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter, A

God doesn't love you as an abstraction. The good shepherd is personal, because the shepherd calls his own sheep by name. God knows your name. God knows your story, and God knows your agonies. God knows what brought you here this morning; and you are the person God loves. 

I have Mass on Sunday, April 26 at St. Isidore @ 7:30/9:30 am The 7:30 am Mass will be live-streamed. https://stisidore.church/worship-online/

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. 

Jesus said, Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate, but climbs over elsewhere, is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger. They will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers. Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them. 

So Jesus said again, Amen, Amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy. I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

The 19th century pope, Leo XIII, addressed the harsh realities of the Industrial Revolution in his encyclical Rerum Novarum of new things. In 2025, a new Pope Leo XIV signaled that AI constitutes a new industrial revolution which calls for the protection of workers and human dignity in the digital age. Last fall, Pope Leo XIV spoke to 5,000 young people by video feed in Indianapolis. Leo recognized that while AI can process information quickly, it cannot replace human intelligence. Don't ask it to do your homework for you, Leo said, and then continued. AI cannot offer real wisdom. It misses a very important human element. AI will not judge between what is truly right and wrong, and it won't stand in wonder before the beauty of God's creation. 

Artificial intelligence is, by its nature, manufactured. We do not encounter the real world or anyone in it. We certainly do not encounter the one whom we call the Good Shepherd. In calling himself the Good Shepherd, Jesus told his disciples and tells us that he remains among us, interacting with us like anyone else in the world. He speaks to us and leads us. In itself, Scripture does not say anything. It's a text, not a person. A text is a technology, although an ancient one, that allows one mind to communicate with another. Like all technology, sacred scripture can be ignored or misinterpreted. When that happens, communication fails. Christ is not revealed. 

This, of course, prompts the question, how do we recognize the shepherd's voice? Father Terence Klein points to a couple of the saints and one-lapse Catholic who can help us discern the shepherd's voice. The fourth century saint, Gregory of Nazianzus, said that sheep follow every shepherd whose voice they love to hear. There's a sweetness that accompanies the voice of Christ as it enters our thoughts. Something instinctual within us wants to respond. Last Saturday, we celebrated Mass in a chapel in Paris where St. Ignatius of Loyola and his six companions from the University of Paris made first vows as Jesuits. In my homily, I shared an insight that we owe to St. Ignatius. Ignatius recognized that emotions are not spiritual static. You do not ignore your emotions to hear God. God speaks through them. Like St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Ignatius says that a soul moving toward Christ is going to experience Christ's inspiration as something sweet, happily received. Ignatius also discusses the converse. If you're moving away from God, the voice of the shepherd will enter your thoughts harshly, in a manner that disturbs. St. Ignatius wrote that in those who are making progress in the spiritual life, from good to better, the good angel touches the soul gently, tenderly, and sweetly, as a drop of water entering a sponge. But the evil spirit touches it sharply with noise and agitation, like a drop of water hitting upon a rock. 

The famous German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger identified a fundamental feature of human thought, one that distinguishes it from every form of artificial intelligence. Humans, he said, never stop thinking or feeling. Our thinking emerges from what we are feeling. Christ uses both our thoughts and our emotions to communicate himself to us. In the Dogmatic Constitution on Sacred Revelation, Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council identified Christ himself, his very person, as the revelation of God. Christ continues to speak to us in both the scriptures and in tradition, but neither of them by itself is a person, someone who addresses us. The Good Shepherd communicates to us through the Scriptures. God inspired sacred Scripture, but God does not necessarily inspire our reception of it. Not every voice that quotes Scripture tells the truth about God. Some voices wear the language of God, but leave people diminished, afraid, and scattered. 

So when Jesus says the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, this is not exaggerated language. This is a diagnosis. Jesus is using the language of the prophet Ezekiel, who speaks of shepherds who fed themselves instead of the sheep. And here is how God responds. I myself will search for my sheep. I myself will be their shepherd. God doesn't love you as an abstraction. The good shepherd is personal because the shepherd calls his own sheep by name. God knows your name. God knows your story. And God knows your agonies. God knows what brought you here this morning. And you are the person God loves. 

We see what God's love can do in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The Spirit creates a new humanity. 3,000 people responded. But this is not about numbers. It's about community. They do not go home as forgiven individuals. They become a new humanity, a new people. They eat together and pray together. The Spirit creates a people where healing becomes shared life. The risen Christ still speaks. The one who will lay down his life for the sheep is already standing here, calling them. The one who was rejected is the one now gathering. As St. Irenaeus of Lyon reminds us, The glory of God is a human being fully alive. When we hear the word of God proclaimed among us, we recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd. It speaks so sweetly within our souls, and we follow the sound we love to hear.