The Call of the Shepherd

The shepherd is everything to his flock; their life, their sustenance, and their care is entirely in his hands, and if the shepherd is good, they will have nothing to fear under his protection, and they will want for nothing.  

Jesus is preeminently the Good Shepherd: he not only loves, feeds, and guards his sheep, but he also gives them life at the cost of his own...  It is by means of the grace, faith, and charity, which the Good Shepherd acquired for us by his death, that we arrive at such intimacy with our God - so deep that it makes us share in his own divine life.

A close relationship of loving knowledge is here established between the Good Shepherd and his sheep - one so intimate that the Shepherd knows his sheep one by one and can call them by name; and they recognize his voice and follow him with docility.  Each soul can say: "Jesus knows me and loves me, not in a general abstract way, but in a concrete aspect of my needs, of my desires, and of my life; for him to know me and to love me is to do me good, to encompass me more and more with his grace, and to sanctify me.  Precisely because he loves me, Jesus calls me by name:  he calls me when in prayer he opens to me new horizons of the spiritual life, or when he enables me to know my faults and weaknesses better; he calls me when he reprimands me or purifies me by aridity, as well as when he consoles and encourages me by filling me with new fervor; he calls me when he makes me feel the need of greater generosity, and when he asks me for sacrifices or gives me joys, and still more, when he awakens in me a deeper love for him.  Hearing his call, my attitude should be that of a loving little sheep who recognizes the voice of its Shepherd and follows him always.  

Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

-Father Gabriel (1952) was a Belgian Carmelite priest, teacher, and spiritual director.