April 23, 2026
Thought and Prayer of the Day
by Mother Jennifer
This coming Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Always on the fourth Sunday of Easter and as part of our celebrations of the resurrection, we hear psalm 23, reminding us that, “The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want”
As we read it, there is such a universal message within. The Lord is My Shepherd – but that means the Lord is your shepherd as well. The Lord is for us all. The desire of God and God’s people is that no-one should be in want.
This year, Good Shepherd Sunday coincides with FaithWorks Sunday. FaithWorks is a charitable program operated by the Anglican Diocese of Toronto which offers support to ministry partners to meet the needs of people who are Indigenous, homeless, or hungry; at-risk women, children or youth, immigrants or refugees, or those struggling with HIV/AIDS. FaithWorks funding helps partner organizations build communities of compassion and hope by providing opportunities for dignity to grow, so that fewer people will be in need.
Mother Maggie believes firmly in the dignity of all people being respected. Her book Encampment, is about a group of homeless people who lived on the church property at St. Stephens-in-the-Fields, received the 2025 Toronto Book Award.Encampment explores the desire we all have for a place to dwell where we are known and valued – not for what we have, but for who we are, including our struggles. Part of the core work of St. Stephens in the fields is to get to know by name those who many others would rather ignore, walk past, or wish were not there. In other words, recognizing every sheep in the flock. This reflects the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus states, “I am the Good Shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep keep me.”
One day, as I was starting to write this book, I was leaving the church where I work when an angry woman stopped me, after throwing a bag of garbage into the encampment in our yard, and told me that a person had started sleeping in her yard, and that I needed to tell her how she could find out who it was and make him go away. I suggested that she ask the person himself who he was.“She stared at me as if I had suggested that she fly to the moon for information, and exclaimed, ‘But he takes drugs!’“‘You can still ask him who he is,’ I said.“And she stormed away up the street.
I tell this story not primarily to illustrate how I have come to be seen as responsible for all homeless people within about an eight-block radius of the church, although that is, for some reason, true. I tell it because there is a great gulf fixed, and very few people are willing to cross it. People who have not lived in the world of which encampments are a part are afraid, and they are angry. And they cannot imagine that there is a way to cross that line, to speak to a homeless person as a fellow human being, without somehow themselves being harmed, being damaged, being touched by a world they would rather deny.
Prayer: O God of salvation, we come to you in joy, for you have heard the prayers of the poor and raised up the lowly. Pour out your Spirit on young and old alike, so that our dreams and visions may bring justice and peace to the world. Amen.
