Loved by God

Homily for Thursday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Paul speaks today with remarkable honesty. If anyone had reason to be confident in religious credentials, it was Paul. He could list his ancestry, his observance of the law, and his zeal for the faith. Yet after encountering Christ, he came to see all those achievements in a different light. Compared with the gift of knowing Jesus, everything else lost its claim on his heart.

The parables in today's Gospel make the same point from another direction. The shepherd searches for one lost sheep, and the woman carefully searches for one lost coin. To God, no person is insignificant. God rejoices not in accomplishments, status, or credentials, but in finding and restoring what has been lost.

That is good news for us. We do not earn God's love by building an impressive spiritual résumé. We are loved because we belong to God. Like the sheep and the coin, we are precious simply because we are God's own.

So today let us seek the Lord, as the psalm urges, and allow ourselves to be found by the One who has been searching for us all along. There is no greater treasure than knowing Christ, and there is no greater joy than being found in God's love.