Today is August 12, Tuesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time.
We read at today’s Mass, “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.” (Mt 18:12-13)
This familiar parable of the lost sheep offers us a powerful glimpse into the heart of God. But let’s ask a deeper question: Does God thirst for us?
Yes. He does.
That’s what this parable reveals: The Shepherd leaves the ninety-nine because he desires the one. He searches for the lost not reluctantly, but joyfully. This desire — this thirst — is at the heart of today’s Gospel.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that God loves all things that exist. His love is not abstract or passive; it is deeply personal and entirely particular. God’s love is the very cause of goodness in the world. Everything that exists, exists because God loves it into being — and continues to sustain it in that love.
Let yourself be found
And yet, while God governs all things, his providence is never cold or distant. The First Vatican Council beautifully says, “By his providence, God protects and governs all things which he has made, reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things well. For all are open and laid bare to his eyes, even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.”
What a profound mystery. God sees us even before we act. Even before we stray. And when we do wander, he does not abandon us. He seeks us. He thirsts for our return.
There is nothing we can do that places us beyond the reach of God’s love — except to refuse it. And so, the invitation is simple: accept the Shepherd’s search. Let yourself be found. Let yourself be loved.
Let us pray,
Almighty ever-living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
