Scottish Catholic Observer

Seminarians at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome are reaching out to the Faithful here Scotland as they take part in a national novena in the lead up to Good Shepherd Sunday on April 17.

The Following the Shepherd novena, in association with Priests for Scotland, was launched by Scotland’s seminarians (above) yesterday. Lay Catholics and parishes are asked to begin praying the Follow the Shepherd novena (below) on Saturday April 9, and continue for nine days until Good Shepherd Sunday—the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Every day during the week, a video of a member of the Scots College community praying the novena will be posted online.

Those taking part in the novena are asked to reflect each day on one of nine elements of ordained ministry, one for each letter of the word ‘Shepherd.’ An accompanying booklet for the novena gives a prayer intention, scripture, prayer and quote from Pope Francis, and each day focuses on one of Scotland’s eight dioceses, with the last asking for prayers for vocations for the whole of Scotland.

On the first day, the ‘s’ in ‘shepherd’ represents ‘serve.’ The prayer intention for the day is: “Our shepherds are called to Service. Today we pray for vocations in the Aberdeen Diocese.”

The other eight elements are heal, evangelise, pray, hope, educate, reconcile, dedicate and search.

Fr John Morrison, the vocations director for Paisley Diocese who helped put the materials together for the national novena, said he hopes the novena will raise awareness of vocations and that it will be picked up widely on social media.

“We are quite keen to make it national,” Fr Morrison said. “Hopefully it will go well and people will share it and retweet it.”

In the accompanying booklet, Bishop John Keenan of Paisley, president of the National Vocations Commission, asks that the faithful ‘please take this opportunity to pray for Vocations in our country for, as the Lord reminds us ‘the harvest is rich but the labourers are few.’”

—For your own copy of the novena, contact Fr John Morrison by emailing [email protected]