The Good Shepherd and His Sheep

by Cardinal Angel Herrera Oria

This season of the Resurrection is one of hope. We must do our share in union with the Good Shepherd. This is accomplished first by our gratitude. From Advent we have been contemplating the love of Jesus in the various mysteries. Now, when the consummation of the work of the redemption is over, He presents Himself to us on the altar as if to embrace us all as the shepherd does his sheep. What more could I have done for it? (My vineyard - Isaias 5).

Our reply to all this must be gratitude and generous love. We may and should say with St Paul: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? For thy sake, says the Scripture, we face death at every moment, reckoned no better than sheep marked down for slaughter. Yet in all this we are conquerors, through Him who has granted us His love. Of this I am full persuaded; neither death nor life, no Angels or Principalities or Powers, neither what is present nor what is to come, no force whatever, neither the height above us nor the depth beneath us, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord (Rom. 8).

Fidelity:  The Good Shepherd said to the world: I am the light of the world. He who follows Me can never walk in darkness; he will possess the light which is life (John 8). These are the words of Christ, says The Imitation, by which we are admonished that we must imitate His life and manners, if we would be truly enlightened and delivered from all blindness of heart (Book 1).

Giving oneself:  From gratitude and fidelity there follows as a consequence the imitation of the way of acting of Christ. As St. Peter says in the Epistle, Christ died and gave us an example that we should follow in His footsteps. His way must be ours - the way of love, sorrow, suffering, patience, complete submission and handing over of the will to the commands of the Father. It must in a special way be the path trodden by all those who have responsibility for the souls of others and who thus have the role of shepherd thrust upon them. He has shown us how to despise death that we may follow Him; He has proposed for us the model we should follow. May we fulfil this by sacrificing ourselves in charity for the flock, giving up our material goods, if necessary our very lives. Thus, through the former and less perfect we shall attain the latter and more perfect. And since the soul is much more precious than material goods which we may possess in an exterior manner, who will not give his inheritance for the sheep when he is already prepared to give his life for them?