{"id":201,"date":"2015-04-26T14:10:02","date_gmt":"2015-04-26T12:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/?p=201"},"modified":"2015-04-26T14:10:02","modified_gmt":"2015-04-26T12:10:02","slug":"4th-sunday-of-easter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2015\/04\/26\/4th-sunday-of-easter\/","title":{"rendered":"4th Sunday of Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Readings:\u00a0Acts 4:8\u201312;\u00a0Psalm 118:8\u20139, 21\u201323, 26, 28\u201329;\u00a01 John 3:1\u20132;\u00a0John 10:11\u201318.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Our Lord describes himself in today&#8217;s Gospel as the Good Shepherd. A good shepherd cares so much for his sheep that he is willing to lay down his life for them. A person hired to do such a job would just say &#8220;this is not in my contract&#8221; and abandon them. Even the owner of the sheep might write them off as the wolf drew close, thinking to himself, &#8220;I&#8217;m insured,&#8221; or &#8220;I&#8217;ll just need to write this off as a loss on my tax returns.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Good Shepherd shares his life with his sheep. He&#8217;s not indifferent to their trials and sufferings, so he&#8217;s not indifferent to their death. He&#8217;d rather die first. That attitude goes beyond just business or even obligation: Jesus says he willingly lays down his life for us, his sheep. He cares about each one of us.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s try to show our gratitude today by letting him lead us in humility wherever he wants to lead us, knowing it&#8217;ll always be toward more verdant pastures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Readings:\u00a0Acts 4:8\u201312;\u00a0Psalm 118:8\u20139, 21\u201323, 26, 28\u201329;\u00a01 John 3:1\u20132;\u00a0John 10:11\u201318. Our Lord describes himself in today&#8217;s Gospel as the Good Shepherd. A good shepherd cares so much for his sheep that he is willing to lay down his life for them. A person hired to do such a job would just say &#8220;this is not in &#8230; <a title=\"4th Sunday of Easter\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2015\/04\/26\/4th-sunday-of-easter\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about 4th Sunday of Easter\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,5,34,15],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cycle-b","tag-easter","tag-fourth-week","tag-sunday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-3f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}