Reading 1 Is 40:1-11
Comfort; give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service is at an end,
her guilt is expiated;
Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
The rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together;
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
A voice says, “Cry out!”
I answer, “What shall I cry out?”
“All flesh is grass,
and all their glory like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower wilts,
when the breath of the LORD blows upon it.
So then, the people is the grass.
Though the grass withers and the flower wilts,
the word of our God stands forever.”
Go up onto a high mountain,
Zion, herald of glad tidings;
Cry out at the top of your voice,
Jerusalem, herald of good news!
Fear not to cry out
and say to the cities of Judah:
Here is your God!
Here comes with power
the Lord GOD,
who rules by his strong arm;
Here is his reward with him,
his recompense before him.
Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
in his arms he gathers the lambs,
Carrying them in his bosom,
and leading the ewes with care.
Gospel Mt 18:12-14
Jesus said to his disciples:
“What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost.”
One of the sins we need to seriously guard against is blasphemy. Blasphemy (put simply) is when we speak irreligiously or sacrilegiously about God or sacred things.
People are often tempted to speak words of blasphemy against God out of frustration arising from crises of life. A person will most likely blaspheme when he/she looks at God from the perspective of his/her problem. That is, when we allow our problems to define how we see God instead of allowing our faith in God to define how we see our problems.
It is not uncommon for people when inundated by the stress of life to think or say that God is uncaring, insensitive, selfish, indifferent or even unjust.
Today, the first reading directs us to reflect on the character of our God and the implication for us. Isaiah described God thus:
He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewes. This figurative language describes the loving-kindness of God. He is not an uncaring God but the most loving God.
The gospel of today further buttressed this. In the parable of the shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to seek one. Jesus opens our minds to understand the value the Father placed on every soul. He cares for each person. How wonderful to think God cares for me as a person.
When I had my life in the Spirit seminar, the first talk made a huge and lasting impression on me. It is titled God’s love (seminar 1). There we learnt that the love of God for us is personal, unconditional and healing. How sweet to know that God loves me personally? An awareness of this truth will definitely shape how we see our problems, how we serve God, how we live and most importantly, it will shut the mouth of our adversary whose greatest ruse is to make us begin to doubt God’s love.
It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that one can become aware of God’s love and so we pray for the enlightenment of the Spirit, which will lead to a deeper awareness of God’s overwhelming and personal love for us.
LESSON 2.
Ordinarily, every father or mother wants a child who will make him or her happy. A good child is also one who seeks ways to make the parents happy. Let’s follow the logic to a spiritual conclusion. God is a Father, we are His children. How can we make God happy? Like the Prophet Micah, we may ask, “with what shall we come before the Lord…?”(Micah 6:6).
The gospel of today provides us with the answer. The restoration of a lost soul gives God great delight. So as good children of God, let us commit ourselves to intentionally seeking how we can help to win souls back to God knowing full well that this gives Him immense happiness.
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami on December 10, 2019.