Good Shepherd of us all, I thank you today for all the good shepherds in my life and for all the ways you’ve shepherded me through their love, their watchful presence, their devotion and protection…
I thank you for my parents, my first shepherds; I thank you for their protection, for the shelter of their love, and for all they sacrificed to help me grow…
I thank you for other shepherds in my family and for all my friends who comfort and challenge me, who dry my tears and make me laugh, who walk faithfully close by my side…
I thank you for all the shepherds who taught me in school, who counseled and directed me, who shaped me and helped me to become the person I am today…
I thank you for shepherds whose names I don’t know, who stand in harm’s way ’round my town and ’round the world, standing guard all day long to keep me safe, keeping vigil while I sleep without a worry…
I thank you Lord, for the shepherds who care for the sick and dying sheep among us, who bind up wounds, who bring comfort to those in pain, who speed the path to health or ease the path to end of days… I thank you for the shepherds you’ve called home, especially those gone much too soon, whose gentle shepherd’s crook I miss, whose presence still abides within my heart…
I thank you for the shepherds, Lord, who remember me in prayer, lifting up my name and needs to you; who keep me in the sheepfold of your grace, you, my gentle Shepherd, Good Shepherd of us all… Amen.
Fr. Austin Fleming, Roman Catholic Priest in Massachusetts
The blame forgotten, shame covered, Peter leapt into the sea. Where tears once drowned hope and denials became despair and self loathing, his eyes had seen that figure on the shore, that body once strung across the stained wood of execution.
A revived fishing business, the dull depression of remembered cowardice, of failed courage, bad dreams of abandonment, a deep sea of pain, now splashed with new hope.
Peter would make it to the shore.
He is risen. Peter is risen from the dead. Three times denied. Three times invited to love again by him who three times prayed his own despair and, three times mocked ‘mid three crosses, in three days rose to resurrect Peter.
Peter made it to the shore.
Others made it to the shore. They ate together, a fellowship of grace and rehabilitation, of forgiveness and hope, a symbol of the persistence of divine love, also for you and me.
William Loader, 1944- , Australian minister and professor
Lord, as if the shock of Good Friday wasn’t enough for your closest followers…
We feel for those faithful women who went to visit you just after sunrise on that Sunday morning, and fled, trembling and bewildered and afraid.
You were not there.
Forgive us when we sanitise your death. And forgive us, too, if we belittle your resurrection!
Please help us to see this most incredible of moments, this greatest twist of any plot, through fresh eyes, on this bewildering, yet most joyful of mornings.
Help us to see it through the tear-filled eyes of those women.
Help us to see it through the disbelieving eyes of the men, some of whom came running.
And help us to glimpse it through your own eyes, which must have blinked into the early morning sunlight of that first Easter Day, from out of complete, and utter, darkness, and refocused, and creased, with a smile.
prayer & verse 
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