Today's Gospel recounts Christ's parable of the lost sheep. In the reading taken from Matt 18:12-14, Christ says:
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,I am reminded of a sermon in which the priest explained that all of Heaven rejoices at the return of one soul to the bossom of our Lord. This time of year, many people (for whatever reason) who normally stay away from church, return for Christmas. We may refer to them pejoratively, as chreasters or C & E Catholics, but we should be careful of looking down on them, for something still stirs within their hearts that they come to worship on these holy days.
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.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost."
Michael Hoffman, who emceed our first men's conference, recently gave a presentation explaining the New Evagelization. One key point he expressed in re-evangelizing those who have left the Church is that we have to make sure that what they are coming back to is a welcoming home. One organization that has done a remarkable job of getting the word out that the Church has her arms open to receiving back her children is the Catholic Comes Home network.
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