Once again, we are gifted with that beautiful image of a shepherd. Many years ago, I was in a role that required me to visit Edmund Rice volunteers working in Kenya and Tanzania. I was struck by how often I would see shepherds tending to their small flocks of goats by the side of the road. The goats never strayed far from their minder, and the shepherd (sometimes a quite young boy) was constantly vigilant for the ‘lost one’.

Isaiah today is full of Advent hope. Speak ‘tenderly to Jerusalem’ just as the shepherd does the flock. ‘Make straight in the desert a highway,’ just as the shepherd leads to pasture. We, like flowers that fade, will come and go, but the fidelity of our God, like that of the shepherd, will last forever!

This Advent time is Good News! We are each called to be bearers of ‘glad tidings.’ Do not be afraid – here is your God. No elsewhere God but an intimate and near God who calls us by name. A God who walks beside us and leads us to pasture. Yes, ‘he will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom and gently lead the mother sheep’ (Isaiah 40:11). Surely, Scripture has fewer, more gentle, and intimate images.

This God of total and unconditional love will leave everything – to come in search of us, each one of us, in the midst of our lostness, our confusion and our pain. He will speak to our hearts, hold us close and nourish our longing spirit.

by Br Damien Price cfc