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This weekend, there are three parables given by Jesus, two of which we have heard this weekend. The third is the very familiar Prodigal Son parable…. That parable was featured last Wednesday night (here) in St Mary's Church as our young candidates made their First Reconciliation accompanied by their families who have helped prepare them for their special day… and with our sacramental team …
I told the children that even though Reconciliation is about telling Jesus our Sins and saying sorry… it is still very much a celebration…. As shown by these gospel parables this weekend…. Of course God is sad when we do the wrong thing…. But the message of the gospels today is that God loves us like a loving parent… with the unconditional love that a parent gives their child……. God loves us…. God will always love us infinitely…. More than we can imagine… we are God's children…. We will ALWAYS be God's children… and whenever we turn back and turn to God in times of failure… GOD IS OVERJOYED… AND CELEBRATES… because God loves us so very much……
That theme goes right through Jesus' ministry, preaching and teaching… and is summed up in the prayer he taught his disciples… the Lord's prayer…. We can see his message through the lens of the unconditional love and relationship between parent and their child….. that is our relationship between ourselves and God…..
When I think of that gospel parable about the woman searching for the lost drachma… I think of something from my childhood….. when I was young… I was always inventing things…. always experimenting with things…. and exploring… I loved electronic things… and still do…. It was so profound that if ever there was a blackout of electricity…… my family would call out "where's Paul?????!!!!"…….. wondering if the power failure could somehow be my doing…… fortunately I always had a fairly good sense of the danger of electricity.. which is just as well… because it is not a toy for young people to play with….. That recent power blackout we had in town on Thursday made me smile…. I still felt the urge to say… "it wasn't me … it wasn't me…."….
Anyways.. as a child I was always inventing systems and processes too….. for example.. i developed a system for finding lost object in the house… and called it the "pk system"… which confounded my brothers., because it sounded mysterious… but really all it was, was a sophisticated 'emu line system' where I went from room to room from one corner to the other until I had found what I was looking for…. If it WAS in the house, my system would find it!!!... It didn't even matter if the thing I was looking for was very valuable… it mattered more that the system was proved to be flawless…. I was forever pretending to patent things… and putting "tm" or ® beside the names of things I invented… I must have driven my family mad.. but it was fun…
It reminds me of the parable today…. The lady searches for one lost coin and will not give up until it is found… it MUST be found… because it is valuable… and she won't give up…. In each of Jesus' parables the thing or the person looked for is in some way (some would think) dispensible… the listeners might think.. WHY go after one lost, stubborn and wilful sheep at the expense of 99?/ why turn your house upside down for one coin?? Why keep looking out for the return of a wastrel son?.... Why///// Because they are Valuable… infinitely valuable… and the owner… God.. will NEVER give up… ever… he searches like a madman and keeps searching until he finds…. Because it is about true love… and God's love for us is the key to understanding everything that happens……
We are unimaginably precious and lovable to God. God loves us. We are valuable, irreplaceable and unique. It does not matter that there are many, many humans in the world. God does not want to lose even one of the humans that God has created. It does not matter that we may have lost our way and gotten lost by our own fault and bad choices. God searches and God finds.
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REFERENCES:
FR. PAUL W. KELLY
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REFERENCES:
FR. PAUL W. KELLY
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