Thursday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Who, having a hundred sheep and losing one, would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one? And the answer is: no one would.

Think of the scene itself. You don’t have a hundred sheep safely behind a fence. You don’t have thirty helpers to watch them while you chase the lost one. You’re in the desert, surrounded by the elements. It’s just you, and one sheep goes astray. If you go after it, you know that by the time you get back, you will have only one sheep left: the one on your shoulders. The rest will be gone.

The only way to make sense of someone willingly walking away from the ninety-nine to find the one is if he has confidence that the ninety-nine will still be there, even in the midst of the desert, even amid all those potential problems and temptations. He would have to trust that, by some miracle, God himself will watch over them while he goes and does what he has to do.

And I think that may be part of the point of the parable: this shepherd, the good shepherd, goes after the one he needs to find and entrusts the others to God’s providence. That is a great challenge for us.

Sometimes we know there is something we are supposed to do, but doing it would leave us vulnerable. We worry that other things will fall apart or go undone if we pursue it. And so we tend to make the safe choice. We tell ourselves, “I’ll do all the things I normally do. I’ll play it safe and let this opportunity pass.”

But I think this parable calls us to have some measure of courage, some degree of trust in God’s providence. If we focus on what we must, if we go and do what is truly right, then God will take care of the rest. He will not allow everything else to fall apart and be destroyed simply because we chose to focus on what was right. It is a call to reevaluate our priorities and recognize that, if we keep doing what is right, God will be there to help us through.

I remember when I was becoming Catholic. I was in college, with a lot of studying and other things to do. I told a priest that it was difficult to fit in all my prayers every day. It was difficult to find the time. And he said to me, “Then your priorities are wrong. You need to pray first. You need to make time for prayer, and then God will help you get everything else done.”

And he was right. The more I focused on prayer, put it first, and made it my priority, the more I found time for everything else. Even things I would ordinarily have struggled to finish in a day—somehow, the time was there. I can’t explain it except to say that God himself was at work. He gives us that grace. He makes it possible when we set our lives in order.

So let us ask ourselves: Where has God called us to step outside what we would normally do and truly do the right thing? Where have we shied away because it would leave us vulnerable, because we feared everything else would fall apart?

Let us recommit ourselves to making that choice, to following him at every moment and taking every opportunity to do what is right. He is with us, and he will not let everything collapse simply because we chose to do what is right and just in his sight.