I know my sheep, and mine know me....

“……the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” John 10:3



We had packed the motor home early that day; we were looking forward to the trip. Lake Tahoe was our destination, where our children would be participating in a soccer tournament.

My husband wanted to leave at midnight. His plan was to beat the heat of the Mojave Desert and arrive at our campsite early, making the most of the time allotted to us.

As he drove through the night we slept soundly until the motor home came to a complete stop and a small voice from a child in the back yelled, “Are we there yet ?” Dawn was breaking and the fog on the road was so thick that the taillights on the car in front of us were barely visible. “No”, my husband said, “We aren’t there yet, but we aren’t moving either”.

Just then, we started to hear the sound of bells jingling softly in the distant. Our curiosity was peaking as the sound grew closer and the fog began to lift.

To our sheer delight, we saw what looked like hundreds of sheep coming toward us. They were being lead by a single shepherd to a pasture across the highway. It was amazing how this one man could guide all these sheep so effortlessly  across the road, but he did.

Today we celebrate the Good Shepherd. May we take the time to pray for the shepherds in our church, as well as for an increase in vocations.

O Jesus,

I pray for your faithful and fervent priests;

for your unfaithful and tepid priests;

for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields.

for your tempted priests;

for your lonely and desolate priests;

For your young priests;

for your dying priests;

for the souls of your priests in Purgatory.

But above all, I recommend to you the priests dearest to me:

the priest who baptized me;

the priests who absolved me from my sins;

the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;

the priests who taught and instructed me;

all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way

(especially …).

O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart,

and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity.

Amen    St. Therese of Lisieux