10 DECEMBER (Mt 18,12-14)

The salvation of his flock was always the one and only solicitation of God, but also the concern and occupation that has always prevented and prevents him from taking rest in his heart and in his mind. It is not easy to give a firm and definitive solution to this one real problem of God, not even by sending Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd of the sheep. The law of redemption and salvation wants and demands that man is always the saviour of man. However, not the man without God, the not saved one, but the man in God, in his Word, the saved man. With Jeremiah, God is committed to be himself the one to give good shepherds to his flock.

Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds. I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow; there they shall increase and multiply. I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble; and none shall be missing, says the Lord (Jer 23,1-4).

With Ezekiel he promises that he himself would have taken care of his sheep. A thing that he does in a stupendous and wonderful way with Lord Jesus, his Only Son.

For thus says the Lord God: I myself will look after and tend my sheep. As a shepherd tends his flock when he finds himself among his scattered sheep, so will I tend my sheep. I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered when it was cloudy and dark. I will lead them out from among the peoples and gather them from the foreign lands; I will bring them back to their own country and pasture them upon the mountains of Israel (in the land’s ravines and all its inhabited places). In good pastures will I pasture them, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing ground. There they shall lie down on good grazing ground, and in rich pastures shall they be pastured on the mountains of Israel. I myself will pasture my sheep; I myself will give them rest, says the Lord God. The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal (but the sleek and the strong I will destroy), shepherding them rightly (Ez 34,11-16).

Jesus, in his humanity does not possess an immortal life. He also is one that knows death. He also leaves this earth in the visibility of his body. He remains there in an invisible way. However, the sheep need visible shepherds, in flesh and blood, who visibly take care of them. This is the reason why never might the solicitousness of God have an end. Every day, He must worry, take care to find good shepherds for his flock, so that none is lost and all enter into the true salvation.

One is a good shepherd, if he is a true shepherd. When is one a true shepherd? When the pastor lives the same solicitude of God. This can only happen in one way: if the same heart of God lives in him. This occurs if the heart of the shepherd is one with the heart of Christ Jesus. The heart of the Father is all in the heart of Christ. Christ is the true, the good and the nice shepherd of the sheep. The heart of every other pastor, becoming one heart with the heart of Christ, lives in the heart of the Father, and he also, abiding in the love of the Father, in the grace of Jesus Christ and in the communion of the Holy Spirit, becomes a good shepherd and is made a pastor after God’s heart.

What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray. In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.

Who does not have the heart of Christ will never take care of the sheep. Even if he wants to, he might never do it, he lacks the source, the spring of true love and the divine charity. Jesus Christ comes, in the Eucharist he gives his heart and all of his life; every day, the pastor wears the heart of Christ the Lord and with it is also clothed of his pastoral charity needed to guide to the path of true salvation the flock entrusted to him.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints give us the heart of Christ.