(Audio)
What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them
would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert
and go after the lost one until he finds it?
Jesus leads us to green pastures. Other shepherds would focus their care on the strong and the seemingly deserving. Jesus tends the lost, the scattered, the injured and the sick.
The lost I will seek out,
the strayed I will bring back,
the injured I will bind up,
the sick I will heal,
but the sleek and the strong I will destroy,
shepherding them rightly.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly who know that they are lowly. The poor in spirit are those that receive the Kingdom. The sleek are difficult to shepherd. They think they know where they are and where they are going and how to get there. But all sheep are lost without the shepherd. All sheep will eventually succumb to wolves or go hungry without his guidance.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. How amazing this is, that a shepherd would die for his sheep, and not only the sheep who would seem to be the best, not even just the sheep who had already learned how to please him, not the strong only, not his friends only, but the weak, and those who acted as enemies of his love.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
This is the Heart will celebrate today. It is good and helpful to remember how far beyond human love is the love with which Christ loves us. How far beyond what we can ask for or imagine is ours in stream that pours forth from the Sacred Heart.
The love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
We realize that we do not love one another as Jesus loves us. It is truly extreme love. But we are called to let our hearts be changed so that we can love this way more and more.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26).
Let us welcome the love of the shepherd as he leads us back from every place where we have gone astray. Let us drink from the stream of mercy that flows from his own heart, the stream of the Holy Spirit, so that we ourselves may be transformed. Let us be led by him to the banquet.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
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