Good Shepherd Sunday 2013

"Be the Light"

Download the resource for Good Shepherd Sunday 2013 below. You can also download a low-quality version of the A4 poster here. Contact us by the email form on this website if you would like a high-quality or A3 sized version of the poster. 

Vocations as a sign of hope founded in faith. 

Read Pope Benedict's letter for the 50th World Day of Prayer for Vocations here. 

Promoting a Vocations Culture in your School and Parish 

1. Public recitation of vocation prayers regularly at Mass and other times of prayer. Pray regularly for our seminarians and priests. 
2. Provide opportunities for Eucharistic Adoration, included guided prayer and music. 
3. Cultivating ‘Sacred Reading’ as a part of retreats and everyday life in school and youth ministry. (More information elsewhere in this resource).
4. Providing opportunities for young people to engage with priests and religious and to speak about their vocation-story.
5. Create a page on your website/blog about the different ‘states of life’ - Holy Orders, Religious Life, Marriage and Family, and Committed Single Life.
6. Find out the ordination date of your local priests and celebrate with them each year. Make it a party!
7. Send greeting cards to our seminarians wishing them well and promosing to pray for them.
8. Host an ‘Altar Server Appreciation Night’ and ask one of the priests to speak to the servers about the privledge of serving during the Liturgy.
9. Promote the lives of the Saints - people who inspire us to holiness in the circumstances of our own lives.
10. Provide opportunities for young people to engage in practical charitable works and liturgical ministries.

From the Bishop

In the Year of Grace, everyone can have a new meeting with Jesus and come to understand what he is offering. Everyone who has been baptised has a vocation to be his disciple. That one Christian vocation is lived out in many ways.

Will this be the year in which you discover your vocation? Or will it be the year in which you rediscover it and renew your commitment to live it out? I pray that grace of discovery for everyone in our Diocese.

Our baptism is the basic vocation. Everyone who has been baptised has been called to share in Christ’s mission. We proclaim that Christ is alive and present in the community that bears his name, not just with words, but with who we are and what we do.

Many are called to the Sacrament of Marriage. In our culture, marriage is often misunderstood in a reduced and even trivialized way. The witness of marriages that are faithful for a lifetime, and generously open to bringing forth and caring for children, are a sign of Christ’s love. We thank God for all who show that this heroic vocation is possible, with his grace.

The single life is sometimes freely chosen. Sometimes, through death of a spouse or for other reasons, it is not. Even then, however, it can be freely embraced and lived out fruitfully and joyfully. May those who have this vocation understand more deeply its dignity and possibilities.

Religious life has been an enormous gift to the Church and the world we serve. The vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, shared with brothers or sisters in a common life, defy the shallow notions of what makes people happy and fulfilled, and point the way to the Kingdom of God. In recent years in Australia, numbers have dwindled, but who knows what surprises of rebirth the Lord may have in store?

The Sacrament of Ordination, which links the Church today to the Apostles, is vital. I thank God for the good priests who serve the Diocese of Bathurst, and for the men training to become our deacons and priests. The demands of this vocation are great, but the power of God is greater. May God’s call be heard in the hearts of many more and may their brothers and sisters in faith support them.

Our Lady of the Central West, pray for us!

+Michael McKenna
Bishop of Bathurst