The lost sheep
Jackals, hyenas and wolves are the sworn enemies of sheep. For the most part animals kill out of necessity, but wolves, however, are not content to just kill a sheep and eat it in peace. On the contrary, their aim is to slaughter the entire flock and not relent as long as there is a sheep still left standing; it seems that they take great pleasure in killing.
When I was a child and a shepherd, I used to take my small flock far away from the village to the mountains; there, in unchartered territory, to prove how indispensable I was to the sheep, I used to play a sort of hide and seek game with them -- I would hide from the sheep and watch their reaction. So long as I was in their sight the sheep would eat in peace keeping one eye on the grass and the other on the shepherd, but once they lost sight of the shepherd, the bell around their neck would immediately go silent as they would stop eating. Then, after raising their heads and looking in all directions and not seeing the shepherd, they would disband and break into a mad dash towards the direction of home. I would then come out from my hiding place, give a loud whistle and they would return and graze again in peace.
Keeping this in mind, if a shepherd was taking care of a flock by himself, it is truly inconceivable that he would leave the flock, placing the 99 sheep in danger, to look for the one lost. He would at the very least first ensure the safety of the 99 and only then go look for the lost one.
This shepherd is special, however, for he uses an unusual type of mathematics: for him, 99 is equivalent to 1, and 1 is equal to 99. God does not have the same priorities that we humans have; the 99 were left behind for the single one. When a mother of nine who lost one of her children was told as a way of consolation that she should not cry as she still had eight left, she promptly responded, “I know I still have eight left, but I do not have the one I’ve just lost”.
The place where we occupy in God’s heart cannot be occupied by anyone else and in this fact that we are all unique to God resides the dignity of the human person. Therefore when someone is lost, God awaits patiently for his return and eventually when he does come back, as we see in the parable of the prodigal son, he is given the very same status that he had before he went away. Upon his return, he once again occupies the place in the Father’s heart that belongs to him alone which had been left empty since he went astray.
According to our ways of thinking, however, the 99 have every reason to be resentful, and we see this very sort of resentment being acted out by the older son in the prodigal son’s parable. One can only imagine that if the 99 sheep had a say, they would voice out their resentment towards the lost sheep by saying that no one had thrown him out of the flock but he had chosen of his own accord to leave the sheepfold and therefore must now suffer the consequences of his actions.
To top it off, when the shepherd finally finds the lost sheep, he does not drag it home kicking and screaming, but rather lays it on his shoulders, and not only gives a great feast but has the audacity to say that ‘there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who need no repentance‘(Lk. 15:7).
Ministry or Evangelization?
Unlike this Divine Shepherd, the Church tends to pay little attention to the lost sheep, saying that we still have the 99 to take care. To look after these 99, a multitude of ministries came about: campus ministries, youth ministries, ministries to the sick and homebound, etc.
According to statistics, however, time has reversed the parable; now only one remains in the flock while the other 99 are lost. This change in reality should have triggered a change in the pastors’ attitude and yet they remain as passive as they were before, now devoting themselves to fattening up the one and only sheep in the fold, and probably consoling themselves by saying that they still have one left…
Since we have only one sheep left in the sheepfold, are we not deceiving ourselves with the use or abuse of the word ‘ministry’? When we talk about campus ministries or health ministries, is it not a great assumption on our part to consider the thousands of students in a university or the hundreds of patients in a hospital as part of our flock?
If we were to use the word ‘mission’ in lieu of ‘ministry’ we would do more justice to the reality; we would then be more honest with ourselves and perhaps by confronting this harsh reality head on we would change our passive attitude of a shepherd to the proactive one of ‘fisher of men’, which Jesus wanted so much for us to be.
Mercy & Mission
‘For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus.’ (Rom. 15:4-5)
In this sense, we can relate to mercy as a form of Mission and Mission as a work of mercy. It is precisely this message that is depicted in the logo of the Jubilee Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis. To go in search of the lost sheep is at the same time a work of mercy and the mission of the new evangelization. In fact, in the logo, the guise of the lost sheep upon the shoulders of the Good Shepherd comes not in the form of a sheep but rather of a human being, that is, the prodigal son.
Not having a better consolation than to live out the Gospel which cherishes us, let us be its witnesses to others so that they too can experience the same consolation that we do, and be missionaries in the same sense as Isaiah who says, ‘Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.’ (Isa. 40:1)
The lost coin
‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.“ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ (Lk. 15:8-10)
We would not be outraged at Jesus’ attitude towards the 99 if we thought that for him the 99 were as lost as the one; the difference is that both the lost sheep and the prodigal son were lost outside the fold; whereas the coin, the older brother, and the 99 sheep that never left the house or the sheepfold, were nonetheless also lost, divorced from God and from their own selves.
A silver coin was a day’s wage in those days and therefore, it was much that was lost. The woman swept the house in the hope of finding it, and in finding it she celebrated just as God celebrates for each one of us who is found.
Those who go to church are the worst
It is true that this grumbling has served many as a poor excuse for not going to Church and participating in the sacraments, and yet still considering themselves as Christians though non-practicing ones. However, the bad examples that the practicing Christians give, in the paths of life, make this statement unfortunately quite often true; in many churchgoers there is little evidence that their participation in the Church liturgies and sacraments has had any positive impact on their lives.
So it would be helpful if we could create some sort of mechanism by which Christians can make an examination of conscience as to the real reasons why they participate in the sacraments. They need to verify the place that religious practice occupies in their lives and to check if it is the engine of a new life of continuous conversion and progress, or if on the contrary, it alienates and justifies a certain manner of living or the general state of things i.e. modus vivendi or status quo…
When I lived in Ethiopia I saw how ignorance killed many people stricken with tuberculosis. The Ethiopian patients after taking the antibiotic Streptomycin for only two months would consider themselves cured and discontinue the treatment. We well knew that they were not completely cured and that when the illness returned, it would be caused by the much more virulent and drug-resistant strain of the bacteria from which many died.
Consequently, the World Health Organization alerted to the misuse of antibiotics for small inconveniences because this abuse rendered important antibiotics ineffective as the bacteria acquired resistance to the drugs. Similarly, this also happens at the ecclesial level, the sacraments are like the authentic antibiotics that kill harmful bacteria or in this case, the tendency to sin; but when they are abused, or they become a routine, they too cease to bear any fruit.
The same can be said of the Word of God which the practicing Christians hear often but not with a right state of mind, hence it runs the risk of sounding ‘déjà vu’ as these Christians become so accustomed to it like a body that becomes so used to an antibiotic, that the Word no longer exposes and kills the harmful germ of sin that it would normally be able to quash.
Furthermore, using the metaphor of the parable of the sower, if the Word of God sounds déjà vu, it means it no longer penetrates into our hearts since we are as hard as the soil on the pathway where the seeds are eaten up by the birds before they had the chance to penetrate into the soil and germinate (Matt. 13: 4). This is what happens to the Word of God that is proclaimed to a wandering mind, a mind that does not pay attention.
At the end of this reflection, and examining the message behind both the parable of the lost sheep and of the lost coin, we reach the conclusion that the 99 sheep were not any less lost than the one that drifted away. In the Lord’s sheepfold, not all that stay in it belong to it, and similarly not all that belong to it are in it.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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