Fourth Sunday of Easter
Jn 10:11-18
April 25, 2021

In some parishes, during the Sunday Masses of the Easter Season, the gathered “profess the faith” after the homily, through the renewal of The Baptismal Promises.

This is entirely fitting for two reasons. First, there is an unbreakable link between Christ’s Resurrection and Christian Baptism. By the power of this first Sacrament of Initiation, we experience a symbolic dying to our “birth life,” and an authentic rising to “Life in the Spirit.” (There is nothing symbolic about “the rising” we experience in Baptism. It is pure reality.)

Secondly, the commitment made at Baptism is the foundation for The Creed…except for this one very significant difference: The formula for Baptism begins by placing the spotlight on evil…and the rejection of it in every form it takes. There is no specific mention of Satan in The Creed. But, by the same token, the details of Jesus’s earthly life are limited to the bare essentials.

He was
born of the Virgin Mary…
COMMA
…suffered under Pontus Pilate, died and was buried.

Some spiritual writers refer to the punctuation mark between The Incarnation and The Passion as “THE GREAT COMMA.”

That little mark on the page is a very poor substitute for all that Jesus said and did as He walked the earth in the flesh.

And so, as we move deeper into the Easter season, the Church takes the spotlight off the Risen Christ and His post-Resurrection presence. Today’s Gospel pushes aside the GREAT COMMA and gives us a glimpse of what happened in between Bethlehem and Calvary.

On this 4th Sunday of Easter, we look back to the “job description” Jesus gave Himself during His life in this world. GOOD SHEPHERD!

And so, when Christians “profess the faith” this Sunday, whether by one of the Creeds or restating the Promises made at our Baptisms…we should, in our minds and our hearts…replace that great COMMA with this beautiful image of Jesus. Think of it this way:

Born of the Virgin Mary…
Sent into time by our timeless God…
To live with and among us as one like us but without flaw or blemish…
To guide us into safe places…
To protect us from attack by dark forces…
To unify us as one family held together by one faith…
To encourage us toward our final destination…
To nourish us with Word and Sacrament during the dangerous journey…
To seek us out and return us to safety when we wander and place ourselves in harm’s way…
To suffer under Pontius Pilate, die, and be buried…and to rise again on the third day.

“THE GREAT COMMA” is the proper punctuation mark in that sentence in the Creed. Still, we should never lose sight of the saving work that filled the gap between Mary’s “Great Yes” and Pilate’s death sentence. And we should be ever conscious of how we fill that gap, which is our own earthly lives.

In a way, this image of “Good Shepherd” Jesus claimed for Himself affirms the message that The Risen Christ continually stressed when making His glorified Self present to His followers:

BE NOT AFRAID…I AM ALWAYS WITH YOU…EVEN WHEN YOU STRAY!