2026 — Lectionary primer

Misericordias Domini

The Third Sunday of Easter · Good Shepherd Sunday

One-year lectionary · Ezekiel 34:11–16 · 1 Peter 2:21–25 · John 10:11–16

Misericordias Domini takes its name from the Introit: "The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord" (Psalm 33:5). The one-year lectionary treasures this Sunday as Good Shepherd Sunday — a day saturated with the comforting imagery of the Lord's pastoral care, with Ezekiel 34, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2, and John 10 all converging on the same declaration: the Good Shepherd has laid down His life for the sheep and taken it up again.

Lectionary Primer PDF

The shape of the service

Historical Background

The Third Sunday of Easter is historically known as Misericordias Domini, a Latin title derived from the opening words of its traditional Introit: "The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord" (Psalm 33:5). In the historic one-year lectionary, this day is beloved across the Church as "Good Shepherd Sunday," with the appointed readings saturated by the comforting imagery of the Lord's pastoral care: Ezekiel 34, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2, and John 10.

The modern three-year lectionary shifted Good Shepherd Sunday to the Fourth Sunday of Easter and redirected the Third Sunday toward post-resurrection appearances of Jesus (such as the Emmaus Road); nevertheless, the one-year lectionary preserves the ancient observance on Misericordias Domini. The liturgical color is white or gold, and the presiding minister uses the joyful Proper Preface for Easter during the Service of the Sacrament.

How the Service Unfolds

The Introit from Psalm 33 sets the theme: "The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord." The Alleluia Verse adds: "He was known to them in the breaking of the bread. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me."

The Good Shepherd Focus: The theological heart of the day celebrates that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, willingly laid down His life and took it up again to give abundant life to His sheep through the ministry of the Gospel.

The Paschal Candle remains near the altar as a visual confession of the risen, glorified body of Christ throughout the Easter season.

The readings at a glance

Old Testament

Ezekiel 34:11–16

The shepherd metaphor was widespread in the ancient Near East for kings and deities, yet Ezekiel 34 delivers a profound shock: the human "shepherds" (Israel's priests and rulers) had failed, plundered, and scattered the flock, so Yahweh Himself steps in to rescue His sheep. God opens with an emphatic self-introduction, hinnī 'anī ("Behold, I, I myself"), conveying absolute divine determination. He promises to "seek" (darash) and "rescue" (the Hiphil of natsal) His people from a "day of clouds and thick darkness" (yom 'anan wa'arafel) — language that points to the exile yet functions prophetically as the darkness that fell upon Jesus at Calvary, the day He rescued the flock from sin and death.

The passage climaxes in verse 16 with a fourfold vocabulary of grace: God will "seek" the lost, "bring back" the strayed, "bandage" the broken, and "strengthen" the weak, directly reversing the failures of the wicked shepherds. When Jesus declares "I am the Good Shepherd" in John 10:11, He is claiming this divine role for Himself: He is Yahweh in the flesh, fulfilling the promise to personally shepherd His people.

Epistle

1 Peter 2:21–25

Writing to Christians enduring unjust suffering, Peter points them directly to Christ as the supreme exemplar — the "Slave par excellence." Drawing explicitly on the Fourth Suffering Servant Song of Isaiah 53, Peter notes that when Christ "was reviled" (loidoroumenos), He "did not revile in return" (ouk anteloidorei). The passage then confesses the heart of the Gospel: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree," where Peter interprets the "healing" prophesied in Isaiah 53:5 specifically as the forgiveness of sins.

The passage reaches its magnificent conclusion in verse 25: "You were like sheep going astray, but you have returned now to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls." The Greek words Poimēn (Shepherd) and Episkopos (Overseer) identify Jesus directly with Yahweh, the Shepherd of Psalm 23 and the divine Shepherd promised in Ezekiel 34. As the Chief Shepherd, He continues to call His wandering sheep back into the fold through the Gospel.

Holy Gospel

John 10:11–16

Jesus prefaces His title with the divine name, egō eimi ("I AM"), claiming to be the very Shepherd-God promised in Ezekiel 34. The word "good" is kalos rather than agathos, carrying the sense of "beneficial" or "salvific": Jesus is the kalos Shepherd precisely because He provides life in abundance. He contrasts Himself with the "hireling" (ho misthōtos), who abandons the flock when the wolf comes, while Jesus "lays down his life" (tēn psychēn autou tithēsin), a phrase unique to John's literature signifying a completely free, voluntary surrender.

Verses 14–15 form a chiastic structure linking the believer's relationship with Jesus to the eternal communion between Father and Son: the mutual "knowing" (ginōskō) between the Shepherd and His sheep is an earthly reflection of the divine life of the Trinity. Finally, Jesus speaks of "other sheep" not of "this fold" — the Gentiles — whom He "must" (dei, divine necessity) also bring, so that there will be "one flock, one Shepherd" (mia poimnē, heis poimēn).

The hymns and their stories

Opening Hymn

"The Strife Is O'er, the Battle Done" · LSB 464

The Latin text for this hymn (Finita iam sunt praelia) first appeared in a 1695 collection of music for Jesuit schools titled Symphonia Sirenum Selectarum. While some have claimed the text dates to the twelfth century, no evidence for it exists prior to 1695. The English translation we sing today was completed by Francis Pott and published in his 1861 collection Hymns Fitted to the Order of Common Prayer. The majestic melody, named VICTORY, was brilliantly adapted by William Henry Monk from a piece by the Renaissance master Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Monk took two phrases from Palestrina's original music, repeated the first phrase as the ending, and composed entirely original music for the resounding "Alleluia" sections. The text draws heavily from Paul's taunt against death in 1 Corinthians 15:54–57, employing the language of warfare to unfold the Easter narrative. A triumphant triple "Alleluia" frames the entire hymn.

Hymn of the Day

"The King of Love My Shepherd Is" · LSB 709

Written by Henry W. Baker (1821–1877), this masterful paraphrase of Psalm 23 first appeared in the 1868 appendix to Hymns Ancient and Modern. The eminent hymn writer John Ellerton described it as "perhaps the most beautiful of all the countless versions of Psalm xxiii." Unlike a strict Old Testament paraphrase, Baker deliberately interprets the psalm through the lens of Christ and the New Testament sacraments: the "living water" washing the "ransomed soul" alludes to Holy Baptism, while the "food celestial" refers to Christ's body given in the Eucharist. The most touching detail surrounding this hymn is that the last words on Henry Baker's lips as he lay dying were from this very paraphrase: the text of the third stanza, "Perverse and foolish oft I strayed." The Lutheran Service Book pairs the text with ST. COLUMBA, an ancient Irish folk melody named in an 1874 hymnal after the early Irish monk and missionary St. Columba (ca. 521–597).

Hymn

"Shepherd of Tender Youth" · LSB 864

This is one of the most ancient hymns of the Christian Church, dating to around AD 190. The original Greek text is attributed to Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215), who appended this poetic hymn to the end of the third book of his treatise Paedagogus ("The Instructor"), likely written while he served as headmaster of the catechetical school in Alexandria. The terms "youth" and "children" in the hymn refer not merely to the young, but to all Christians regardless of age; Clement explicitly notes in his treatise, "We are the children." The original Greek is vividly metaphorical: "Bridle of untamed colts, Wing of unwandering birds, sure Helm of babes, Shepherd of royal lambs." The English paraphrase we sing today was penned by Henry M. Dexter in 1847, who marveled that early Christians may have sung this very hymn before the Apostle John died.

Closing Hymn

"O Little Flock, Fear Not the Foe" · LSB 666

The authorship of this hymn has a complex history, having been attributed variously to King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Johann Michael Altenburg, and Jacob Fabricius. A seventeenth-century manuscript chronicle records that King Gustavus Adolphus wrote a prose version shortly before the Battle of Lützen in 1632 and asked his chaplain, Jacob Fabricius, to create the versified form. Born during the devastation of the Thirty Years' War, the text operates on two levels: historically, it reflects the "little flock" of the Evangelical army defending their cause; spiritually, it represents the entire Christian Church standing firm in a hostile world. The hymn boldly declares that as long as God's Word is certain, the enemy's might is "a joke, a mere facade." The most brilliant detail is the hymn's placement: it was deliberately assigned the number 666 — the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18 — as a defiant reminder that Christians have no need to fear Satan when Christ is by their side.