“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)

In this tender declaration, Jesus reveals the very heart of God—a heart that seeks, nurtures, and sacrifices for each one of us. The image of the Good Shepherd is not one of distant authority, but of intimate presence, of someone who knows His sheep by name, who walks with them, guards them from harm, and leads them to life-giving pastures.

In the Carmelite tradition, God’s care is experienced in silence, prayer, and loving union. This spiritual path invites us to trust that, even in the darkest valleys, the Shepherd walks beside us. In the silence of contemplation, we discover that God is not remote but tenderly near. Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross teach that God seeks the soul with relentless love, even when the soul feels lost or abandoned. The Shepherd does not forget His sheep.

Blessed Francisco Palau y Quer, a 19th-century Carmelite mystic and missionary, deepened this vision by linking the Shepherd’s love to the mystery of the Church. For Palau, the Church was not merely an institution but the mystical Body of Christ—God present among His people. He wrote: “My mission is to proclaim to the world that the Church is beautiful, that she is loved by God, and that she is our Mother.”

In his exile and solitude, Palau experienced both the pain of division and the healing embrace of God’s love. He came to see the Church as the living face of humanity in need and God in love—a union expressed in the Shepherd’s embrace. His pastoral mission—caring for the sick, the marginalized, and the spiritually abandoned—was his way of imitating the Good Shepherd, who does not abandon the wounded but draws near to bind their wounds.

To follow the Good Shepherd, then, is to enter into communion with God’s love for all people. It is to see each person as precious, known, and pursued by the Shepherd. It is to say, like Palau, that we too must care for the Church—not only as structure but as the suffering Christ in the world: the poor, the lonely, the seeker, the lost.

Let us allow ourselves to be found again by the Good Shepherd. Let us enter into the stillness of prayer where His voice can be heard. And let us, moved by His love, go out to others with the same tenderness and courage—to be shepherds of hope in a fragmented world.