Loss, recovery & celebration
(Luke 15:1-32)
The three parables which form the Gospel this week share a common pattern: loss, finding, celebration.
Jesus tells these parables in the context of a shared meal with the ‘tax collectors and sinners’. The scribes and Pharisees complain about Jesus welcoming sinners and eating with them. Jesus tells these parables to explain his actions and to invite the scribes and Pharisees into a new understanding of God’s love and mercy.
The parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost sons share a common theme: that the mercy of God breaks through all human and religious restrictions about how God should act toward sinners.
They are stories of lavish and undeserved love and mercy. What shepherd in his right mind will abandon ninety-nine healthy sheep to go after a lost one? What woman will spend all day turning the house upside down to find a coin of little value? What father will joyfully welcome home a wasteful and disrespectful son? What brother will do the same? Scribes, Pharisees and we ourselves may not, but God will.
The Gospel offers not just the hope of God’s mercy and forgiveness but the certainty of it.
These three parables are also an invitation to the scribes and Pharisees, and to us, to join in Jesus’ mission of mercy; to behave as God behaves towards our brothers and sisters – with mercy and forgiveness – and welcoming all to the Great Feast.
- pdf Celebrating At Home - 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time [PDF] (2.80 MB)
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Celebrating At Home - 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time [ePub]
(2.25 MB)
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- pdf Celebrando in Casa - XXIV Domenica del Tempo Ordinario (427 KB)
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