Catholic Liturgy for the 24th
Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 15, 2019. Gospel of Luke 15:1-32. Theme: Precious & Invaluable
Today’s gospel present us with
three beautiful parables aimed at trying to help us better understand and live
our relationship with God. Each one is so full of meaning within itself that it
should be its own Sunday Gospel. But, be
that as it may, they do have a united message in that they each speak to us
about something that is lost but then is found; someone who seems to dead to
life but then becomes alive again. Each of these parables show us how precious
and valuable we are as individuals in God’s eyes.
Like the one lost sheep, God goes
seeking after us, so to speak, and continues the quest until he has found us. And
when he finds us he scoops us up in his arms, presses us to his heart, and
carries us home over his shoulders. This image reveals to us how precious we
are to God. It reminds us that the individual is important to God; that we are
not just one person lost in a crowd of a billion faces to him.
Like the one lost coin, God can
see and find us even amidst all the messiness in life. The coin that Jesus is
talking about was actually a very expensive piece of currency, but it was
extremely tiny. It was very easy for it to get lost in the straw and dirt
floors of the homes in his day. And so, the lady of the house turned the entire
place upside down until she found her treasure. This shows us that even if we
feel like we are nearly invisible in life, small and insignificant in the grand
scheme of things, we are nonetheless extremely valuable in God’s sight. No
matter what we do or what mess we may have made with the gift of life, God does
not give up the quest to set things right with us again.
Like the father of the prodigal son,
God is on the lookout for us to return home to him. And as soon as he sees the
tiniest bit of remorse or sorrow within us, his joy over our change of heart
causes him to run out and embrace us. And not only does he welcome us home, he
goes above and beyond, dressing us in the finest clothes and jewelry, symbols
of the many graces and blessing she showers down upon us.
Jesus is giving us in these
parables deeply personal and touching examples of what we call reconciliation: being
restored to a personal intimate relationship with God after we have chosen to
ignore or destroy it by sin. Each of
these parables show us how messed up our understanding and thinking can be when
it comes to our relationship with God. You see, we tend to think that when we
commit sin, God is angry with us, wants nothing to do with us, stops loving us.
What Jesus is trying to get into our thick heads through
these parables is that none of that is true! When we sin, we are actually the
ones who have strayed from the flock, become lost in some corner of life, or walked
away from our relationship with God. But he is rich in mercy and doesn’t hold
that against us. There is no such thing
as God holding a grudge! He is always reaching out to us and hoping for our
return. God is the one who takes the initiative, the first steps in
reconciliation. All we need to do is humbly accept it.
This is why Jesus gave us the Sacraments of Confession. It
enables us to accept the gift of reconciliation and personally encounter the
Risen Living Lord through the ministry of his priest. In this Sacrament of
Reconciliation, we express our sorrow for having hurt the ones we love and we
seek to make things right again. We come
to God with an awareness and sorrow like the prodigal son had once he came to
his senses and could properly evaluate his life. And like the father in that parable, God runs
out to meet us when he sees us approaching the sacrament, and before we can
even kneel down to confess he is wrapping his arms around us and showering us
with his grace.
The truth that Jesus teaches us in today’s gospel is
something that each one of us should memorize and treasure in the depth of our
hearts. When we awake in the morning and
when we go to bed at night, and even often throughout the day, we would do well
to repeat it to ourselves as a short on-going prayer: “I am precious to God and
invaluable in his sight.”
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