Good Shepherds
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10 May 1992
Rome, Italy

My dear Confreres,

In December 1990 I spent two days in what is sometimes called the last city of the world, Punta Arenas in Chile. It is from that city that expeditions set forth for the Antarctic. The land around the city is poor and rather barren. The winter is long and bleak and cold. During the lunch in the house of the Sisters I was sitting beside the local Bishop, and in the course of the meal I asked him how many Catholics were in the extensive territory of his diocese. He replied, "about a hundred thousand" and then he added, "and three million sheep." Here, I said to myself afterwards, is one bishop in the world who must meditate a lot on what it means to be a shepherd, and who would hardly need to explain a word of today's Gospel to his people. There would be no risk that his people would interpret the metaphor of sheep and shepherd incorrectly, as might well happen in an inner city parish. Sheep are not our favorite image for Christians, for sheep are considered to be overly submissive. Sheep do not lead, they follow.

It is not so much what the sheep do, nor even what the shepherd does, that the key to understanding the metaphor is to be found. It is rather on the quality of the shepherd that we must center our attention: on his heart and mind rather than on his functions. Think of the occasions when Our Lord spoke of the shepherd. The shepherd is a man who protects; the hireling does not do so in moments of danger and crisis. The shepherd is a man who searches; he leaves the ninety-nine alone in order to search out the one sheep that is lost. The shepherd is a man who speaks and calls the sheep by name; the sheep recognize the authentic voice of the shepherd.

However unfamiliar we may be with shepherds, the image was a favorite one of Our Lord, because it conveyed to His hearers the idea of one who cares and who does not take to flight when danger threatens. The image of a shepherd continues to be used by the Church for the same reason that Our Lord used it. In the latest Apostolic Exhortation on the formation of priests, Pastores Tibi Dabo, the Pope repeats over and over again that the priest in the Church is: "a sacramental representation of Jesus Christ, the Head and Shepherd.... Priests exist and act in order to proclaim the Gospel to the world and to build up the Church in the name and person of Christ, the Head and Shepherd.... The priest's fundamental relationship is to Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd." (pp15-16).

The functions of a shepherd are to protect, to search, to speak. They are among the functions of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. They are among the functions of every priest today who by Ordination represents Christ, the Shepherd, in and for His Church, each according to his particular calling as a priest.

As a priest what do I protect? If a persecuting secular authority were to arrest me as a priest, what evidence would it have to condemn me as a priest? Would it be evident that I am a man who by my manner of life protects the values of Christ, the Good Shepherd, and is prepared to suffer in order to uphold them?

As a priest, what do I search for? St. Vincent might well phrase the question in this way: Have you zeal for the salvation of souls, like Christ, the Good Shepherd, who came to search out the lost? Given St. Vincent's sensitivity to fulfilling the Will of God in the smallest details of his life, he might well ask: Do you as a priest consistently search out the Will of God, not only in the crisis points of your life, but day by day and hour by hour?

As a priest, what do I speak or proclaim? Are my words, my observations, my judgments in harmony with the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd? "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, they follow Me." (Jn 10:27). Does my life, which is the most powerful evangelizing word I can speak, attract others or repel them from Christ, the Good Shepherd?

As representatives of Christ, the Good Shepherd, in the world today, one of our responsibilities is to find other shepherds, for with the eyes of Christ, the Head, we see that "the crowds are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." (Mt 9:36). I like very much the idea proposed by Pope Pius XII that every priest should try to leave behind him a successor in the priesthood. Today the Church is praying particularly for vocations to the priesthood and to the religious life. The whole theology that underpins the work of securing vocations has been very succinctly expressed by St. Vincent when he wrote to Father Pierre de Beaumont on 2 May 1660: "It belongs only to God to choose those whom He wishes to call to the Community. We are assured that a missionary, given by His fatherly hand, will do alone much more good than many others who do not have an authentic vocation. It is up to us to pray that He will send good workers into His harvest and to lead such good lives that, by the force of our example, we would attract, rather than repel, them to work with us." (Coste VIII, Fr. ed., p. 287).

The harvest indeed is great and the laborers are few. There are many more than three million sheep seeking a shepherd. May the Lord in His mercy and through the intercession of His Immaculate Mother Mary make us worthy of the vocations He is calling to the Community.

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