I used to joke about that footsteps in the Sand poem. You know the one that talks about how someone thought that God had deserted them because there was only one set of footsteps? “When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you.” In the end, I would add, and that groove over there? With the claw marks? That’s where He drug me kicking and screaming. Today on the Feast of Saint Charles Borromeo, the patron Saint of Catechists and Catechumens, we are reminded that attitude is important. The Church gives us this beautiful image of the lost sheep and the shepherd who seeks them.
Most of the time, we focus on the sheep, especially the lost one, in this parable from Luke’s Gospel. It’s a good thing to think about, precisely because we are that lost sheep. We are the one who was lost in the world, and Jesus the Shepherd who came into our lives to carry us on His shoulders, rejoicing with the Angels and Saints in Heaven. This parable also gives us a clear glimpse of who God is. An understanding of what “God is like.” Our perception of God is of utmost importance because knowing who God is, helps us perceive and unpack our own identity. Our own purpose. Made in the image of God, it gives us an awareness of how our own behavior should be towards others. It provides us with an example of how we should think and act and how the world “ought to be.”
If God is a seeking and caring God, who makes the first move to find and lift up the lost, then that grace should be a reminder that we too should be caring and sensitive to the needs and how we treat others. Luke also focuses on repentance. This is where two thoughts genuinely converge because repentance is an ongoing task for all of us. It’s a daily choice for conversion, a continual growth to be more like God and less like the world.
Do we find joy in repentance? Does the world see it in our attitude toward Mass attendance or our behavior at having an opportunity to be in line for confession? God is indeed the one who takes the initiative, the one who moves toward us to lift us up, to give us the grace necessary to repent. Still, it also requires action on our part. Salvation is entirely the work of God, but we too are wholly involved in that work. We participate in the Sacraments. Sometimes we don’t allow the depth of what we are doing here to sink into our minds and hearts. The words and symbols are not just external signs and rituals but an encounter with the living God! An opportunity for a heart-to-heart meeting with God in which He has once again come into our lives to lift us on His shoulder and carry us closer to Heaven, closer to Himself. Can people see the joy of that when we speak about Mass? When we speak about our Jesus? When we look face to face with the Shepherd as that Host is elevated before us, and the minister says “This is the body of Christ!” is the sheer joy of that moment, of knowing He has once again found us amid the messiness of our lives and wants to lift us on His shoulders so that Hosts of Heaven can cry out with joy on our face and in our hearts?
A reflection on the readings for the Feast of Saint Charles Borromeo: November 4th, 2021