Good Shepherds

10 May 1992
Rome, Italy

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." (ß 15-16).

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, who 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 to 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).