Today is… I know, you’ve expected me to say “Mother’s Day,” and you’d be right. We’re grateful for the women who gave us birth, who nurtured our lives and our faith. We pray for them—the living and the dead.

But today’s also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. And I’d be remiss—we’d be remiss— if we didn’t pay attention to this day when we ask the Good Shepherd to bring us shepherds to continue his work with his flock.

Just as we need mothers to give and sustain human life, we need priests, deacons, and bishops, religious women and men, and husbands and wives in sacramental marriages. (At this reading, the Conclave has not yet begun. We might even need to continue to pray for a new Pope.)

We need the priest who gives new life in baptism, who anoints us in confirmation, and who welcomes us to the Eucharist. We need the ordained priest who forgives us when we’ve fallen, who anoints us in our physical weakness, and who prays back to God and his saints.

Pray this day with intention. Don’t just ask God to send priests from somewhere—anywhere!— else, so that we don’t have to do anything, we don’t have to sacrifice. Look among your families and friends, and take a look around the church at Mass. Where’s the young man God will call to be a priest? Who’s the woman God will bring into religious life? Do you see a husband and father who might one day be a deacon? Pray their names. And, if—and only if—the time is right, talk to them. Ask the question: “Did you ever consider….” Then let the Good Shepherd do his work in all our lives.