Mt 18:12-14
What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Jesus Will Come Fetch You
That God would go out of the way for you, isn’t that a humbling prospect? Jesus would leave the fold and the field for you. Through thorny and uncharted territory, he searches for the lost soul. The One who created out of extraordinary generosity, to begin with, the one who owes us nothing, will still go out of the way to bring you home. And Jesus does so joyfully.
Sit in awe this Advent that the Creator who holds you in being, even now at this very moment, is on his way to fetch you.
—Adam Bohan, SJ, is a scholastic of the Midwest Province working as a registered nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Loyola University Medical Center.
Prayer
Before A Crucifix
Who is this who waits
With arms extended
And wide open hands?
It is Christ, Our Lord.
For ages and ages,
He has been waiting here,
Generations have passed,
He has not folded His wings
Or closed His eyes.
For whom does He wait,
for whom the invitation,
for whom the inexhaustible patience
of infinite love?
It is for one,
who comes slowly,
hesitating, afraid,
trusting more to chance,
to perishable things
and the frailties of men,
than to the everlasting arms.
It is for me,
that for two thousand years,
Love has waited here,
with wide wings spread.
It is for me,
the courtesy
that will not be made importunate,
will not constrain my love
or force the suit.
It is for me,
the silence of the word
wherein the beating heart
alone is audible.
It is for me that God awaits,
with open hands,
a beggar at the locked gates
of my soul.
It is for one who doubts,
mistrusts and fears,
who sees the tears
upon the human face
of God,
through her own tears,
and is not moved.
Of all the world
unworthiest to be loved,
driven at last
from self-inflicted harms,
Reluctantly,
to the Eternal Arms.
—Caryll Houselander