When the littlest of the sheep is lost, he leaves all the rest The lost I will seek out, and looks for the lost one. And when he finds it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, when he gets home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’
All because the heart of Jesus is so big, so overflowing with love, so utterly and infallibly in love with his sheep.
And we the sheep, little and lost as we so often are, seek only to imitate that love, to make our hearts swell like his Sacred Heart, in love with him and in love with his fellow lost sheep.
It was 39 years ago today, at just about this hour, that I knelt down in front of Bishop Flanagan upstairs in this Cathedral Church, and there he ordained me to a share in the Priesthood of the Good Shepherd. And I give infinite thanks for the graces by which he has, for each of those years, shepherded his shepherd and revealed the wonders of his love.
