If anyone enters the sheepfold through me he shall be saved, he shall go freely in and out and shall find good pasture.” Let us at this Holy Mass through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, offer our Hearts fully and with complete trust to the One who offers His Sacred Heart fully to us in the Holy Eucharist.

Fourth Sunday in Easter-Good Shepherd Sunday.

Today we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday. Without doubt one of the most popular images of Jesus Christ is that of the Good Shepherd. It is an image that is easy for us to understand especially when we are depressed and sad. It is an image that is very consoling especially when it feels like God has abandoned us. And for some of us, it was a consoling image when we ourselves had strayed away from God. A God that actually leaves the other sheep for the sake of “one,” is a God that is not so frightening, but very compassionate, very merciful to the sheep who but turns to Him for forgiveness and confesses its sins. Jesus as the Good Shepherd is an image of God that makes the person who has strayed, actually want to be found.

Jesus is indeed the Good Shepherd who freely chooses to lay down his life for his sheep.” Jesus has laid down his life for His sheep. And it is only because of Jesus’ own suffering and death that we can be saved. His sacrifice is how He saved us when we were lost sheep. His sacrifice is how we are still being saved and protected while we are in the unsafe pastures of this world. And His Sacrifice is our hope of final salvation in order to reach the eternal pastures of heaven.

And His once-and-for-all Sacrifice is being re-presented, that is made truly present, at this and every Holy Mass in order to continue to save and protect us. This means that the Holy Mass is the very same Sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary made present in our midst and in our time, alone with Its saving power. This brings us to the deepest meaning of Christ the Good Shepherd, one that many may not have heard before.

The very idea of shepherd in the Old Testament and the New was always connected to priestly service. In other words, shepherding in the biblical understanding was priestly work. The priest is one who offers Sacrifice and worship on behalf of the people, interceding to God for the sake of the people.

Jesus was and is the true priest who offers the perfect sacrifice and so perfect worship and adoration on behalf of the people. It is perfect because Jesus is God who offers Himself to God—God adores God. Jesus offers Himself on our behalf to the Father, in order to take away our sins and to provide for us the grace needed to union with God now and in the life to come.

Jesus is also the perfect priest as the One who offers and at the same time the perfect victim, the One Who is being offered. Only through His perfect offering of Himself to the Father on our behalf can we or anyone be saved. In the Holy Mass, Jesus the God-Man offers to God the Father the one perfect and so acceptable act of adoration for the salvation of the world, the self-same act on the cross. The Holy Mass is then the source of all the grace, ALL GRACE, that comes into this world.

Jesus the Good Shepherd continues to carry out His saving work as the Good Shepherd in the Sacred Liturgy. Therefore, the work of the Liturgy is first and foremost the work of the Good Shepherd (It is only secondarily our work. In fact, we can only do our work of adoration and worship in union with the perfect worship and adoration of the Son present at every Holy Mass). We must always remember that it is really Jesus Christ who offers the Holy Mass in the person of the priest. Jesus in other words, carries out his shepherding in and through the Sacred Liturgy, which includes the Holy Mass and all the other sacraments, which flow from It.

This means then that Jesus the High priest carries out His priestly work of Shepherding through the Church and it's Sacred Priesthood. When the Sacraments are offered it is really and truly Jesus Himself who baptizes, forgives, confirms, heals, marries, ordains and as I said, offers priestly sacrifice. To carry out His saving priestly work, Jesus the Good Shepherd actually depends on other shepherds who He has given a share in His priestly office. And they for their part, place their voice, their hands, their bodies, themselves at the disposable of the Good Shepherd. Through the Church, they are to shepherd God’s people in Christ's name and with His own Divine Power by offering sacrifice; and so, they shepherd in Christ stead, by sanctifying, teaching and by governing the sheep all with the divine authority of the Head, Jesus, in whose Name they have been called and ordained.

Through the ordained priesthood, Jesus the Good Shepherd is always with us, as close as any Catholic Church, were he waits on our sacred altars and in our tabernacles night and day for any lost sheep who but calls out for him. He gives us His Holy Church led by His Pastors, a Church whose teachings are the very voice of the Good Shepherd. “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I will give them eternal life...”all through the Holy Eucharist.

Jesus’ love for his sheep is a sacrifice of love; it is agape love to the ultimate extreme. And so, we learn from Jesus what love really means; love ultimately means sacrifice laying down ones life for one’s friend; and Jesus has laid down His life for His friends, you and me, and literally continues to do so at the Holy Mass, to provide us with the means to love like Him.

Jesus continues to shepherd us through the priesthood of His Church that he founded and through which he continues to bring his work of redemption into every age including our own. Jesus shepherds us through His shepherds the priests, in whose person HE continues to lay down His life for us through them. In the Holy Eucharist made present by the Priest and the Holy Spirit working through the priest, Jesus give us, offers us His own divine Love and Life in the Eucharist so that we can love with his own heart, that is so we can love with the very love of God, a divine love know as Charity. But for our part we must open our heart to His; that is, offer our heart in response to the offering of His. The Holy Mass is truly meant to be the place on earth where not only heart speaks to Heart, but where heart offers to Heart.

“If anyone enters the sheepfold through me he shall be saved, he shall go freely in and out and shall find good pasture.” Let us at this Holy Mass through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, offer our Hearts fully and with complete trust to the One who offers His Sacred Heart fully to us in the Holy Eucharist. Through the Holy Eucharist, Who is the Good Shepherd in our midst, let us enter into His Love so that we may by the Power of the Holy Spirit, take on in our self, in our lives and for our world the image of the same Good Shepherd, being used by Him to seek out the lost and becoming united to Him, and through Him with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit along with all the angels and saints, forever and ever. Amen.