24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
September
11, 2016 9:30 and 11:15am
Saint Mary Parish, Pylesville
Mother Teresa
Last
Sunday, Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis: Saint Teresa of
Calcutta.
Mother
Teresa founded and led the Missionaries of Charity. These Sisters have as their mission the care of
the least, the lost, and the last in society.
Mother
Teresa and her Sisters did this in Calcutta.
They would care for those who were destitute and literally dying on the
streets.
In some
cities in our own country, the Missionaries of Charity care for persons with
AIDS. For example, in Baltimore, they house
about twelve persons at a time who are in the advanced stages of this illness
and literally have no one to care for them, no place to go, even no place to
die.
Seeking Out the Lost
What
the Missionaries of Charity do illustrates the lesson of today’s gospel.
The
context is that some of the religious leaders are upset because Jesus is having
dinner with “sinners.” We are not told what sins these people committed,
but they are labeled as “sinners.”
These
religious leaders believe that associating with these “sinners” makes you unclean.
In response to them, Jesus tells two stories: the one about a shepherd
looking for one lost sheep and the other about a woman looking for one lost
coin.
We may
not catch it, but right here Jesus is challenging the religious leaders. The society of that day looked down on
shepherds as low-life people and looked down on women as second-class persons.
But
here, in these stories, Jesus wants us to identify with the shepherd and the
woman. He is even saying that this
shepherd and this woman are images of God – what a challenge that is to these
people.
So,
Jesus is jolting his listeners to start thinking differently. And then, he gets to his main point – that we
can all be lost in two ways.
Lost: Our Fault
First,
we can be lost like the one sheep.
We can
wander off and our being lost is our own fault. We can stop praying from our heart and being
open to what God is calling us to do.
The
result is that we lose our grounding in God and may well drift into harmful behavior. For example, we may get into demonizing
comments about others, maybe even in the name of God or of what we think is
right.
When we
are lost in this way, Jesus is saying that God is still there, still loving us
and looking for us, just like the shepherd looking for that one lost
sheep. In fact, when we are like that
one lost sheep, hopefully our conscience will bother us and we will feel guilty.
I
suggest that these twinges of conscience or guilt feelings are really God
trying to bring us back. And, by all
means, notice in Jesus’ image that the shepherd does not scold or punish the
lost sheep, but simply carries it back to the flock – what a good example this
is for how we as a Church are to relate to the lost sheep!
Lost: No Fault
And
then we can be lost like the lost coin.
This
means that we are lost through no fault of our own. For example, we can feel lost when we are grieving
the death of a husband or wife.
Or we
can feel lost when we are dealing with depression. When we are lost in this way, even though we
may not feel it, God is like the woman looking for the one coin.
God is
still there, loving us and wanting to be close to us. Maybe it will take time for us to feel this.
We may
need to push ourselves to come to Eucharist or push ourselves to respond to the
companionship of family and friends. But
if we give God a chance in these ways, we can be found and we can find
ourselves once again.
Conclusion
So, a powerful lesson today: 1) about God, like a shepherd
or a woman, searching for us when we are lost, and 2) about ourselves – about
the ways we can be lost and how we might respond when that happens!
