We must remember to help the poor and marginalized this Christmas
This is an excerpt from a homily given at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre Dec. 6.
The parable of the lost sheep is very telling. Sheep, unlike other animals, for example the dog, are unable to find their way home, and need the guidance of the shepherd. We are like that, unable to save ourselves by our own efforts. We need intervention from on high.
At Christmas this prodigy of love takes place: God became one of us to help us find the road that leads to happiness and salvation.
Today’s Gospel licenses the often spectacularly inefficient use of time, energy, and resources that the Church puts into caring for those in need. Sometimes we may wonder what we are achieving. Yet this is precisely the Saviour’s way.
Each person is unique and valuable and with a dignity based on his or her creation in God’s image and redemption in Christ. Each one deserves the best of what we have to offer.
That is why, as Pope Francis says, the Church is not an NGO, a slick social-service organization, but a Body, the Body of Christ, composed of members who march to a different drummer than that of idolized efficiency.
We follow the Lord, Who left 99 sheep on the mountains to fend for themselves to “go in search of the one that went astray” (Mt 18:12).
This is the calculation of Christ, the Good Shepherd. How odd of God to have so little business sense, to be so reckless! And yet, as the great French poet, Charles P‚guy, once remarked: “And yet this is how the books are kept with God.”
He takes an intense, even infinite, interest in the least important single sheep. How is it that the loss of one sheep should cause God such distress, just as finding it causes Him such joy?
Advent provides a grace-filled opportunity to avoid the temptation to spend our time and attention on those with whom we feel comfortable, those who understand us and appreciate us.
It is a distinguishing mark of the One Whose coming we await during Advent that He came especially for the lost and forgotten. Jesus prioritized the little ones, those on the periphery or fringes of society. He had a fierce desire to have the marginalized cared for.
Like Him, therefore, as His followers, we must seek out the one lost. Nothing is more important.
One of the distinguishing marks of the One Whose coming we await is that He comes for the lost and forgotten. Who do we know who is lost or forgotten this Christmas? And what are we going to do about it?
The Fathers of the Church, however, gave another, wider meaning to this parable, one with an equally important message for us. Humanity, all of us, are the lost sheep searched out by the Good Shepherd.
In a particularly beautiful way, Pope Benedict XVI drew on this meaning in the inaugural homily of his pontificate. “For the Fathers of the Church, the parable of the lost sheep, which the shepherd seeks in the desert, was an image of the mystery of Christ and the Church.
“The human race – every one of us – is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way. The Son of God will not let this happen; He cannot abandon humanity in so wretched a condition. He leaps to His feet and abandons the glory of heaven in order to go in search of the sheep and pursue it, all the way to the Cross.
“He takes it upon His shoulders and carries our humanity; He carries us all; He is the good shepherd Who lays down His life for the sheep.”
“God’s work is to search and seek out the lost in order to invite them back: “Our God is a God Who searches,” for “God cannot abide losing what is His.”
God has a weakness of love for those who are farthest away, who are lost. He goes in search of them. And how does He search? He searches to the very end.
Now, in the Eucharist, Jesus comes to us. We do not go to Him, or at least this is not the primary direction or action. He comes to all of us and each of us. That is the wonder.
