This is Vocations Sunday, a special day set aside every year offer prayers for vocations to the priesthood and the religious life. 30 years ago this would have been a straight-forward enough homily to deliver. Even if there were sufficient priests in Ireland to serve Ireland's spiritual needs, yet vast swaths of the universe still remained ignorant of Christ and the gospel. And if they had not heard of Christ, they could not possibly be saved. Today, thirty years later, the world is a far more complex place. The world has changed utterly. That change (and the nature of that change) is well encapsulated in a poem named Annus Mirabilis by the English poet Philip Larkin:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up till then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for a ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me)
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Circumstances have conspired to force us to question a lot of our received assumptions about the church, about the world, about the priesthood and religious life, about lifestyle, and indeed about salvation itself. So life is not as simple and straightforward as it was 30 years ago. I have already referred in the Missalette to some of the factors that have emerged to cloud that clear world. You do not have to be reminded that some of the darker clouds emerged from within the Church itself. Recent years have been difficult years for the Church and it would be a foolish priest indeed who would stand up on the pulpit here in Vocations Sunday and make no reference whatsoever to these realities. To use the two main images of today's gospel, the Church has undoubtedly produced good shepherds, but it has also unfortunately produced some pretty voracious wolves. Some men who were ordained to help and to heal, spread suffering and fear wherever they went. On this vocations Sunday only an ostrich could stand in the pulpit and avoid this issue. Obviously, such scandalous betrayals will stand as obstacles in our paths for a long, long time to come. These sordid episodes will remain sources of great pain and shame for those who have interests of the Church at heart. We really still have no idea of the amount of victims that are actually out there. But you can be very sure that only a mere fraction of them have come to light. The greatest service we could offer to the Church today is to encourage and support any victims of abuse that we know to come forward and avail whatever therapeutic services the Church or society can offer them.

However, the fact that so many betrayed the gospel does not empty the gospel of its truth. The care, the concern and the fierce passion exemplified by the figure of the Good Shepherd retains its strong validity. The current 'vocations crisis' has been exhaustively analysed. However, we are obliged to address this issue as passionate believers, not as disinterested social scientists. We are faced with a change in religious sensibility, a marked alteration in the way we as a people feel about our God, our religion and our world. It is not that God has been banished. Far from it. But our aesthetic sense of his place and role in our world has altered. Vocations will not rain from the skies at our pious behest or requests. They may 'grow from the ground' if we confront some of our ambiguities and our comforting idols. Luther remarked that no one is converted by a sunset. No one is threatened or challenged by the bland, anemic image many of us have of God or Jesus. The Father sent Jesus to challenge us, not to applaud us. Now the last thing we need is a return to the supposedly 'good old days', when God was presented as a sheepdog rather than a shepherd. He specialised in worrying the flock rather than in protecting them. The Good Shepherd of the scriptures is a very different figure indeed. The Good Shepherd combines gentleness and fierce passion. He leads from the front, ever alert for new pastures for his flock. His voice may be gentle, but he lambasted the hirelings. And, when necessary, he will insert himself between the predator and his prey. He literally lays down his life for his flock. How different to the anemic idol many of us have fashioned for ourselves.

While mankind has needs, God will call. And those needs, while differing from generation to generation, are as glaring today as they ever were. St Paul's simple observation has not been blunted by time: 'They will not hear of him unless they get a preacher'. Now the particular cultural model in which that preacher is embedded is largely irrelevant, be they celibate or married or whatever. But what is relevant is that they are genuine believing and effective preachers. But a believing community must provide those preachers and work for them. They will not be plucked like white rabbits from the magician's hat. It is a relatively difficult time for serving priests, I suppose. There is a fair amount of disillusionment to be found in their ranks. The priest poet Padraig Daly has expressed well that disillusionment which breaks through into dogged commitment:

THE LAST DREAMERS

We began in bright certainty:
Your will was a master plan
Lying open before us.
Sunlight blessed us,
Fields of birds sang for us,
Rainfall was your kindness tangible.

But our dream was flawed;
And we hold it now,
Not in ecstasy but in dogged loyalty,

Waving our tattered flags after the war,
Helping the wounded across the desert.

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