25/04/2026
April 26, 2026 - Fourth Sunday of Easter - World Day of Prayer for Vocations
Jesus' discourse on the Good Shepherd will lead to a dramatic clash with the Jews, who ultimately want to stone Jesus, not for any evil deed—they say—but because "you, being a man, make yourself God." The Jews' resistance to believing that Jesus is not just another shepherd, but "the shepherd" who leads all to life in abundance, is, ultimately, the same resistance we all have to consider the possibility of a call to sanctification. To believe, that is, that our humanity, like that of Jesus, is precious enough to contain the entire life of God and that therefore God can reveal himself, not outside of us, but within us, bringing forth within us all the energies, lights, and resources that we need to save our life and finally share in the very life of God. This is by no means a given for two reasons. The first is that the good shepherd must save us not only from external dangers but above all from ourselves, who live distractedly and whose interior lives are clouded by the pursuit of comfort, laziness, and a thousand false fears. There is a kind of perversity in our humanity whereby, instead of desiring to grow and improve, we tend to self-justify, procrastinate, hide, rationalize, and self-deceive. This is why Peter says: save yourselves from this perverse generation, and this is why Jesus says that the shepherd, after entering the sheepfold, must cast the sheep out, must teach them the path of risk, of trust, of detachment from self.
The second reason is that this good shepherd, although appointed Christ and Lord by his resurrection, comes to us, not in power and strength, but knocking at the door. God comes to us not as a law, a doctrine, or evidence, but as a voice that challenges our freedom. The human heart, for its part, responds not to rules or doctrines but to a voice, to a personal relationship, to someone who loves it so freely that he can entrust his freedom to Him. Ultimately, the human heart needs to entrust itself to another person. The Easter gospel, then, is precisely this: Christ is risen. He lives and makes himself present in our lives as the shepherd makes himself present to the flock. As the One to whom you can entrust your life. This is dramatically important because if we don't open to Him, our freedom is at the mercy of so many others who don't enter through the door and don't knock: the stranger, the mercenary, the thief, the bandit, and finally, the wolf. Strangers are the idols, from money to self-esteem, that alienate us from ourselves and from our true vocation to love. Mercenaries or thieves are other men who can sometimes be false, self-interested friends or other times enemies who want to deprive us of our good. In the first case, we must avoid relying on them rather than on God; in the second, we must avoid fearing them more than God. The last of the enemies is the wolf that comes to kill, the demon, the enemy of human nature. Jesus destroyed this wolf, not with force and violence, but by replacing his prey and thus allowing death, encountering his abundant life, to be absorbed by it. Jesus is the only one who had not sinned, who had never uttered a lie with his mouth, and who, faced with human opposition, instead of threatening revenge, offered himself. By offering himself in this way, he opened a path to abundant life, starting precisely where our paths were lost and met with death. Jesus hid his divinity in his flesh, as one hides medicine in a morsel to offer it to those who do not want it, and when death devoured him, his divinity destroyed its sting. The fear of death has been replaced by the promise of the Holy Spirit, which is participation in the life of God. All are called—you and your children, says Peter, but also those who are far away. Only by accepting this call to sanctification can we welcome every other call to give our lives as Jesus did in life's various vocations. Indeed, only those who have life in abundance, eternal life, the life of the Holy Spirit, can give it to others.
