This Sunday is celebrated as Good Shepherd Sunday in the Church and is also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd who comes to shepherd his people in love.  The love of the Good Shepherd is a love in which the shepherd lays down his life for his people.  To be a shepherd in the image of the Good Shepherd Jesus, a person must place love at the very center of his or her being and be willing to lay down their lives in love, to give of themselves in love to God and to others.  True and authentic life is nourished and developed by love, the love of God and the love which we experience in community through others.  There is no greater calling, no greater life and destiny, than the call to love and to live one’s life in love.  The love that our society offers is too often a thinly veiled self-love.  The world teaches us to seek love by using others for our own selfish pleasures and pursuits.  God gives us the image of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life in love to reveal to us an authentic love which does not seek one’s own pleasures or desires but which sacrifices our own lives and ends for a greater life, love and end which is the love of God and the salvation of all people in the love of God.

     Prayer to our loving Father expresses the faith that we have in his Divine Initiative, in his calling young men and women to the altar to serve the Church with their lives and their unique gifts.  God never ceases to call young men and women to priesthood and religious life.  As children of God we must realize the tremendous gift and honor that our Lord bestows upon those whom he calls to service in the Church.  The fact that we are seeing less young men and women answer the call to priesthood and religious life does not mean that God has neglected his Divine Initiative.  Rather it is more likely that we as a people of faith have not appreciated the value and honor that a life of service to the Church affords us.  As a people of faith we have not helped young men and women discern the call of God and have not encouraged and supported their desire to offer their lives as a sacrifice of service in a life of ministry.  The other side of developing vocations to the priesthood and religious life comes from the Human Response in offering our freedom to the Lord and freely and generously responding to the Divine Initiative of his call.  The Human Response comes from a life deeply rooted in love, truth and freedom and oriented towards our future beatitude in God’s heavenly kingdom.

     Very soon now we will begin to initiate our young people in the Eucharistic life of love as our young people begin to receive the Eucharist for the first time.  Our children receive their “first communion” and are initiated into a life of love and self-gift.  Every vocation in the Church is rooted in this deep and intimate communion with Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.  Jesus gives us his own life, his Body and Blood, as our food for eternal life.  In receiving the Eucharist for the first time our children are not receiving a thing but are receiving a person, the real presence of Jesus who has given his life for us and becomes an eternal and living source of life and eternal love for us.  In the Eucharist, our children are able to draw their life from God who is love and are then prepared to offer their own lives in love and service to God and their neighbor.  A process of consecration is begun within them, in their hearts filled with the love of God’s Holy Spirit, in their bodies, conformed to the Body of Christ and in their actions which become actions of self-gift.  The communion that they receive is a communion in the divine life of God and prepares them for a life of communion in the Body of Christ, the Church.  This communion is a divine gift of love that prepares them in love for a life of love.  It is this love which will transform the world and place it under the Lordship of Christ the King preparing the way for the Kingdom of God.  The Eucharist becomes the center of life where we encounter Jesus the Good Shepherd who feeds us with his word and sacrifice of love.  Only through this “gate” which Jesus the Good Shepherd offers us are we able to enter into eternal life and the kingdom of heaven. 

     May God bless our parish on this beautiful Good Shepherd Sunday with an abundant love lived in community and family so that our young people may see the beauty of a life lived in the service of God and community.  May he place the seed of a religious vocation in the heart of our young people as they receive this beautiful gift of love.