|
Greetings! How are you? Perhaps you are aware of this but it’s good to know that here at the parish of Immaculate Conception we have multiple “Lost and Found” locations. There is one in the parish office and another in the school office and one in the sacristy at church and another in the usher’s room. Over the course of my thirty-six years of life, there have been innumerable moments when I have lost keys, phones, shoes, papers, and other items of personal significance. Some of them have actually turned up at the four respective locations here at IC while others have been found at the rectory, in my car, or in the most obvious places that they could have been.
A while back someone taught me a brief prayer through the intercession of St. Anthony of Padua to help track down those missing things, “Tony, Tony turn around. Something’s lost and must be found!” More often than not the patron saint of lost things (and probably with a nudge from my guardian angel), in conjunction with God’s grace, that which was once lost was then found. At the interior level my heart has been full of joy when missing things have been recovered.
Within the Gospel for today’s daily Mass (Luke 15:1-10), Jesus taught the crowds about the joy in Heaven when not merely lost things but when lost persons were found through repentance and conversion. Drawing upon the parables of the hundred sheep in which one baaaad member of the flock wandered off and then the woman who lost one of ten coins Jesus helped to instruct his listeners about the joyful mercy of God for repentant sinners. We ourselves have confident hope that Christ our Good Shepherd loves each of us more than even a million coins. As a response to His grace-filled initiation and loving persistence may our life be one of ongoing conversion, repentance for the erroneous ways of the past, and a grateful glance towards a future of heavenly bliss.
| 
