Where Are You?

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Is 40:1-11; Mt 18:12-14

Today’s Gospel highlights the ‘searching God’ who comes looking for His people. 

The Gospel begins with Jesus’ question, ‘What is your opinion?’ Then, Jesus goes on to narrate a story of a shepherd who leaves behind the ninety-nine sheep in his sight and goes in search of the one that went astray. 

The story that Jesus presents appears to many irrational or unreasonable. For this reason, no sane mind can accept the logic of the shepherd’s action. 

Instead, a reasonable mind would have answered Jesus’ question like Caiaphas, the high priest, who said, ‘It is better that one man die for the people than the whole nation perish’ (Jn 11:50). 

But here lies the difference: a reasonable mind would certainly accept such an answer but not the compassionate God whose calculations are always unique and different.

Here, it is good to remember that what is reasonable and logical need not always be right and just because it seldom makes room for mercy and compassion, which often defy logic and reason. 

Jesus’ story of the shepherd, which epitomizes his own life, defies logic and reason because it is hardly interested in showing a shepherd who is lost in making reasonable calculations but whose heart goes after the one sheep that was lost and went missing. 

The story of the compassionate Shepherd reminisces about the compassionate God in the Old Testament Who goes after His people whom He found missing. 

The caring God asked Adam, ‘Where are you?’ (Gen 3:9). 

The compassionate God asked Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ (Gen 4:9). 

Hence, the Divine History shows that God has a predilection for those who are unwanted and abandoned by society. 

As such, the least and lost become God’s people because no one looks for or after or is interested in them. 

This is what we celebrate at Christmas – the God who comes in search of His people asking, ‘Where are you?’ just as He went after Adam and Abel. 

Let us pray that we may be found by our God, who comes searching for us so that we may dwell in His eternal embrace. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar