Lost and Found

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

According to a study released in October 2002, by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an estimated 797,500 children were reported missing in the United States in 1999. Of these children who go missing, too small a fraction are recovered. When a child is found and returned home, that homecoming is marked by a relief and rejoicing that cannot be measured.

Having tapped into the contemporary pathos that surrounds children lost and children found, let us allow those strong deep feelings to enable our better understanding and appreciation of today’s scripture readings. In the first reading from the book of Exodus, it is the nation of Israel, God’s chosen sons and daughters, who have lost their way. Rather than remain faithful to God in whose image they had been created they preferred to bow down before images that they themselves had created. This golden calf represented a willful and disobedient departure from God. Nevertheless, God, through Moses’ mediation, welcomed back the prodigal people and was reconciled with them. Israel’s story of returning home to God anticipates and complements the Gospel wherein a lost sheep will be found, a lost coin will be retrieved and a lost son will be restored to the love of his father and the secure comfort of his home.

Today’s second reading will draw us into the experience of Paul. Describing his own as a life of loss and sin, Paul regarded his encounter with Christ on a Damascus road as the moment he was found, forgiven and saved. Moreover, he offers his readers the example of his own experience as a pledge of what God can and will do for all who are lost in sin.

The experience of the wayward son featured in today’s Gospel (Lk 15:1-32) is also represented as an example and pledge of God’s loving mercy for sinners. So extreme was the son’s experience of being lost that Luke refers to him two times as being dead (Lk. 15: 24, 32). His experience of being found is so exuberant that it is twice equated with being alive. As Fred Craddock has explained in his book “Luke” there is something worse than death: being lost and alienated from a forgiving God. So also there is something better than life: being found and welcomed home.