Dear Brothers and Sisters, dear Ordinands

At this hour in which you, dear friends, through the Sacrament of Priestly Ordination, are being introduced as shepherds into the service of the great Shepherd Jesus Christ, it is the Lord himself who in the Gospel speaks to us of service to the flock of God. The image of the shepherd comes from afar. In the ancient East, kings used to designate themselves as shepherds of their peoples. In the Old Testament Moses and David, before being called to become leaders and shepherds of the People of God, had actually been shepherds of flocks. In the travails of the period of exile, faced with the failure of the shepherds of Israel, that is, of the political and religious leaders, Ezekiel had traced the image of God himself as the Shepherd of his people. God says through the prophet: "As a shepherd reviews his flock ..., so I will review my sheep and gather them from all the places where they were scattered in the days of cloud and gloom" (Ez 34:12). Now Jesus announces that this hour has come: he himself is the Good Shepherd in whom God himself cares for his creature, man, gathering human beings and leading them to the true pasture. St Peter, to whom the risen Lord had given the task of shepherding His sheep, of becoming a shepherd with Him and for Him, describes Jesus as the "archipoimen" - the archpastor (cf. 1 Peter 5:4), and by this he means that one can only be a shepherd of the flock of Jesus Christ through Him and in the most intimate communion with Him. It is precisely this that is expressed in the Sacrament of Ordination: the priest through the Sacrament is totally incorporated into Christ so that, starting from Him and acting in view of Him, he carries out in communion with Him the service of the one Shepherd Jesus, in whom God, as man, wants to be our Shepherd.

The Gospel we have heard on this Sunday is only a part of Jesus' great discourse on shepherds. In this passage the Lord tells us three things about the true shepherd: he lays down his life for the sheep; he knows them and they know him; he is at the service of unity. Before reflecting on these three essential characteristics of being a shepherd, it will perhaps be useful to recall briefly the previous part of the discourse on shepherds in which Jesus, before designating Himself as Shepherd, says to our surprise: "I am the door" (Jn 10:7). It is through Him that one must enter into the shepherding service. Jesus emphasises this basic condition very clearly by saying: "Whoever... goes up another way is a thief and a robber" (Jn 10:1). This word 'climb' - 'anabainei' in Greek - conjures up the image of someone climbing over the fence to reach, by climbing over, where he legitimately could not reach. "Rising" - we can also see here the image of careerism, of the attempt to get "to the top", to get a position through the Church: serving, not serving. It is the image of the man who, through the priesthood, wants to make himself important, to become a personage; the image of the man who aims at his own exaltation and not at the humble service of Jesus Christ. But the only legitimate ascent to the shepherd's ministry is the cross. This is the true ascent, this is the true door. Not to desire to become someone personally, but instead to be there for the other, for Christ, and thus through Him and with Him to be there for the men He seeks, whom He wants to lead on the path of life. One enters the priesthood through the Sacrament - and that means precisely: through the donation of oneself to Christ, so that He disposes of me; so that I serve Him and follow His call, even if this should be at odds with my desires for self-fulfilment and esteem. To enter through the door, which is Christ, is to know him and love him more and more, so that our will may be united with his and our actions become one with his actions. Dear friends, for this intention we want to pray again and again, we want to strive for precisely this, that Christ may grow in us, that our union with Him may become ever deeper, so that through us it is Christ Himself who shepherds.

Let us now look more closely at Jesus' three fundamental statements about the good shepherd. The first, which with great force pervades the whole discourse on shepherds, says: the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The mystery of the Cross lies at the heart of Jesus' service as shepherd: it is the great service He renders to us all. He gives himself, and not just in the distant past. In the sacred Eucharist he does this every day, he gives himself through our hands, he gives himself to us. For this reason, with good reason, at the centre of priestly life is the sacred Eucharist, in which Jesus' sacrifice on the cross remains continually present, truly among us. And from this we also learn what it means to celebrate the Eucharist properly: it is an encounter with the Lord who for our sake strips himself of his divine glory, allows himself to be humiliated to the point of death on a cross, and thus gives himself to each one of us. The daily Eucharist is very important for the priest, in which he exposes himself again and again to this mystery; again and again he places himself in God's hands while experiencing the joy of knowing that He is present, He welcomes me, again and again He lifts me up and carries me, He gives me His hand, Himself. The Eucharist must become a school of life for us, in which we learn to give our life. Life is not only given at the moment of death, not only in the way of martyrdom. We must give it day by day. One must learn day by day that I do not possess my life for myself. Day by day I must learn to surrender myself; to make myself available for that thing for which He, the Lord, needs me at the moment, even if other things seem more beautiful and more important to me. Give life, not take it. It is precisely in this way that we experience freedom. Freedom from ourselves, the vastness of being. Precisely so, in being useful, in being a person who is needed in the world, our life becomes important and beautiful. Only he who gives his life, finds it.

Secondly, the Lord tells us: "I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father" (John 10: 14-15). Two apparently entirely different relationships are intertwined here: the relationship between Jesus and the Father, and the relationship between Jesus and the men entrusted to Him. But both relationships go right together, because men, after all, belong to the Father and are in search of the Creator, of God. When they realise that one only speaks in one's own name and draws only from oneself, then they realise that it is too little and that he cannot be what they are looking for. Where, however, another voice resounds in a person, the voice of the Creator, of the Father, the door to the relationship that man awaits opens. So it must be in our case. First of all, we must live our relationship with Christ and through him with the Father; only then can we truly understand men, only in the light of God can we understand the depth of man. Then the listener realises that we are not talking about us, about something, but about the true Shepherd. Obviously, also encapsulated in Jesus' words is the whole practical pastoral task, to follow people, to visit them, to be open for their needs and questions. Obviously practical, concrete knowledge of the people entrusted to me is essential, and obviously it is important to understand this 'knowing' of others in the biblical sense: there is no true knowledge without love, without an inner relationship, without a deep acceptance of the other. The shepherd cannot be content with knowing names and dates. His knowing the sheep must always also be a knowing with the heart. This, however, is only possible in the end if the Lord has opened our hearts; if our knowing does not bind people to our own little private self, to our own little heart, but instead makes them feel the heart of Jesus, the heart of the Lord. It must be a knowing with the heart of Jesus and oriented towards Him, a knowing that does not bind man to me, but guides him towards Jesus, thus making him free and open. And so we too among men become neighbours. So that this way of knowing with the heart of Jesus, of not binding to me but binding to the heart of Jesus and thus creating true community, that this may be given to us, we want to pray to the Lord again and again.

Finally, the Lord speaks to us of the service of unity entrusted to the shepherd: "I have other sheep that are not of this fold; these also I must lead; they shall hear my voice and become one flock and one shepherd" (John 10: 16). It is the same thing that John repeats after the Sanhedrin's decision to kill Jesus, when Caiaphas said that it would be better if only one died for the people than for the whole nation to perish. John recognises in this word of Caiaphas a prophetic word and adds: "Jesus had to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather together the children of God who were scattered" (11:52). The relationship between the Cross and unity is revealed; unity is paid for with the Cross. Above all, however, the universal horizon of Jesus' action emerges. If Ezekiel in his prophecy about the shepherd was aiming at the restoration of unity among the dispersed tribes of Israel (cf. Ez 34:22-24), it is now no longer only about the unification of dispersed Israel, but about the unification of all God's children, of humanity - of the Church of Jews and Gentiles. Jesus' mission concerns the whole of humanity, and therefore the Church is given a responsibility for the whole of humanity, so that it may recognise God, that God who, for all of us, in Jesus Christ became man, suffered, died and rose again. The Church must never be content with the ranks of those it has reached at some point, and say that the others are just fine: the Muslims, the Hindus, and so on. The Church cannot retreat comfortably within the limits of its own environment. He is charged with universal concern, he must be concerned for all and of all. This great task in general we must 'translate' into our respective missions. Obviously, a priest, a pastor of souls, must first and foremost concern himself with those who believe in and live with the Church, who seek in it the path of life, and who for their part, like living stones, build up the Church and thus also build up and sustain the priest. However, we must also always again - as the Lord says - go out "into the streets and along the hedges" (Lk 14:23) to bring God's invitation to his banquet also to those people who have not yet heard of it, or have not yet been inwardly touched by it. This universal service, service for unity, has many forms. Always part of this is also the commitment to the inner unity of the Church, so that it, beyond all diversity and limitations, is a sign of God's presence in the world, which alone can create such unity.

The early Church found in the sculpture of its time the figure of the shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders. Perhaps these images are part of the idyllic dream of country life that fascinated society at the time. But for Christians, this figure naturally became the image of the One who set out to seek the lost sheep: humanity; the image of the One who follows us even into our deserts and confusions; the image of the One who took the lost sheep, which is humanity, on his shoulders and brings it home. It has become the image of the true Shepherd Jesus Christ. To Him we entrust ourselves. To him we entrust you, dear brothers, especially at this hour, that he may lead and carry you every day; that he may help you to become, through him and with him, good shepherds of his flock. Amen!

[Pope Benedict, homily for the priestly ordination of deacons, 7 May 2006]