Podcasts for Young Philosophers and IB Theory of Knowledge Students

Podcasts for Philosophy students as well as students in the IB program and who are taking Theory of Knowledge.

My Sheep Hear My Voice

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter

Deacon Douglas McManaman

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.

Years ago I was reading parts of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography in which he makes the interesting observation that a shepherd (or shepherdess) leads his (her) sheep from the back. This image was his model of leadership. The Vice President of a Canadian company that specializes in offering leadership training for corporations travelled to Israel to watch how a shepherd relates to his sheep in order to gain insight into the fundamental principles of leadership. And of course, the shepherd made it very clear that a shepherd typically leads from behind, not from the front. That is the first principle of leadership. But before he can lead from behind, he must invest time and ‘relational equity’ in the sheep. He must come to know each sheep individually. Owners of dogs usually recognize the distinct and unique sound of their pet’s bark. Similarly, a shepherd knows intimately the sound and behavior of each of his sheep. 

How does this translate to leadership? About 30 years ago I met a well-loved high school principal from the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, Lorne Howcroft, who said to me that being a principal is primarily about recognizing the gifts and talents of your staff and putting them up front in leadership positions, while you step back. A good principal–not to mention a good bishop–is like an umpire in a baseball game; he does not have the skills to pitch or catch high flies–that’s for the skilled athletes. In the same way, a good leader is not necessarily skilled in this or that, but will recognize the talents and gifts in the people around him and place them up front so that they may lead in that capacity for the benefit of the community. 

The second principle of good leadership is that one should only lead from the front in times of danger, or when the shepherd needs to trace out a different route. Such a frontline position, however, is only temporary; the normal course is to step back and get out of the way. Poor leaders, on the contrary, lead from the front for the most part, and run to take cover in times of danger; thus, the sheep are thereby left to the wolves, or thrown under the bus, as they say.

The third principle is “do not lead alone”. This particular shepherd in Israel led with the help of a female ewe. She was the power broker in the flock. And I will say that without a doubt, the best leaders in my life in over 35 years in education were women: the smartest and most prudent high school principal in all those years as a teacher was a woman, and the most competent Director of Education, also a woman. Misogyny, which spawns patriarchy, is really a foolish posture that has done so much to retard the development of our institutions, including the Church of course.

The next point I’d like to make has to do with the sheep who know the voice of their shepherd. There’s a wonderful YouTube Video on Cornerstone Kids that is about two minutes in length that shows a bunch of sheep grazing in a field, and three different people, one by one, approach the fence and call out to the sheep. But the sheep, as though they were deaf, don’t move–not even look up. Finally, the shepherd comes to the fence and utters the same call, and they all look up and within seconds make their way to the shepherd.

Of course, we are Christ’s sheep. All of us. We have all been anointed priest, prophet, and king at our baptism. We’ve been given the seven personal gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as unique charisms in view of our specific vocation. All the baptized share in the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. Our deepest identity in the Person of Christ is that we are priest, prophet, and we share in Christ’s kingship, but unfortunately the faithful for the most part do not see themselves as such. And yet there is a great deal of wisdom in the ordinary faithful of which they are not even aware. John speaks of this in the second chapter of his first letter:  

As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false; just as it taught you, remain in him (2, 27).

I have to laugh sometimes when I join a table at our parish bible study, because a number of parishioners will say what they think in answer to a particular question, but they always end by saying something like: “I don’t know. What do I know?” I laugh because what she just said was so rich, detailed, and full of insight. They do know; they just don’t know they know. Occasionally I will have lunch with a parishioner who has never studied theology in his life, has no advanced degrees and drives a truck for a living. When he speaks, however, he exhibits tremendous spiritual and theological insight, and he too has no clue how much wisdom he has acquired over the years. All this is the result of the anointing that John speaks of in his first letter. 

The faithful recognize the voice of the shepherd; some more than others, perhaps. But each one also sees the world and interprets what she hears in the readings from her own unique vantage point. Among us are parents with years of experience who know about the difficulties and challenges in raising children today, and we have teachers who understand the needs of young students, a very different world from the world of our childhood; nurses with knowledge that results from extensive experience with the sick and the suffering, psychiatrists who understand mental illness and the latest developments in treating such illness and who understand a great deal about how spirituality fits in to good mental health, etc. Each one recognizes something about the shepherd from their own unique vantage point. They know Christ in a way that I don’t, and they manifest Christ in a way that I don’t. And that’s why it is so important to listen to one another, if we are to be a community that is made up of a discipleship of equals.

Womanhood and Priesthood

Deacon Douglas McManaman

At a recent bible study, I was asked how it is that Adam prefigures Christ. I don’t believe there is a simple and single answer to this question, but diving into it opens up an interesting horizon in light of which we may be able to shed light on other important questions having to do with the role of women and perhaps the ordination of women.

Those who posed the question were puzzled that Adam could prefigure Christ; for Adam is fallen, but Christ is perfect; Adam was disobedient, while Christ was obedient; Adam was married but Christ was not, and Adam was created while Christ is the eternal Person of the Son made flesh, etc.  

Jesus is the second Adam, or last Adam (Rom 5, 12-21; 1 Cor 15: 22, 44-49; Eph 1:10). All things were created “through him and for him” (Col 1, 16). The first Adam is indeed a figure of Christ. We say this because God created Adam (humanity) in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. What this means is that there are two ways to be “Adam”, a male way and a female way. It is not Adam the male who was created in the image and likeness of God while the female was in some ways secondary. Rather, Adam is both zakar (male) and neqebah (female). These two Hebrew words imply relation to one another. Hence, the human person is fundamentally relational; in other words, the one cannot be understood without the other. Zakar and neqebah imply an “existing towards one another”, for zakar (male) means “the one who has a tip” and neqebah (female) means “the one who is punctured”. The relationship of the sexes is clearly implied; for each one individually is reproductively incomplete, but together, in the act of sexual union, they become reproductively one organism.

According to the Genesis text, it is not the male (zakar) by himself who is the image (zelem/eikon) of God, nor is it the female (neqebah) by herself who is the image of God; both of them together constitute the divine icon that is Adam. And so God in His active generosity, in His effusive act of communicating the goodness of existence to creatures, is represented in the icon of male and female, joined in the one flesh union of marriage. It is important not to overstate the passive element belonging to the female in the act of sexual union. Her ovum actively “goes out” to meet the male seed, and so her role is not entirely passive. The first parents (Adam) are one body, one flesh, who prefigure Christ, who is one body with his Church.

In the second creation story, the man is put into a deep sleep and from his side, the woman is formed. This allegorical imagery foreshadows the cross on which Christ enters the sleep of death, and from his side the Church, his bride, is born–blood and water proceed from his side, symbolizing the Eucharist and baptism; for it is through baptism that one becomes joined to Christ’s Mystical Body, and of course the Eucharist is Christ’s flesh and blood. As De Lubac famously said: “The Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church.”

Christ’s existence is a relational existence. He is the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, which is a subsistent relation. And since in the flesh, he is one Person, Christ continues to exist “in relation to…” He came to redeem his bride, the Church, the New Israel. The existence of the first Adam, as we said above, is relational, for Adam includes zakar and neqebah who exist in relation to one another (who face one another). Their relationship is nuptial, and of course the relationship between God and Israel is nuptial, and the relationship between Christ and the Church is nuptial, and heaven will be an eternal wedding banquet (Mt 22, 1-14). 

“Adam’s” existence is ordered to Christ, who is the fulfillment of humanity (Adam). We read in section 22 of Gaudium et Spes that “…only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light”. And so “Adam” indeed prefigures Christ, who in turn is the perfection of Adam (humanity). But “Adam” is not a man in the sense of an individual ‘male’, but ‘them’, male and female in relation to one another. The two in relation are the ‘icon’ or image of God. This is a relationship that gets disrupted or distorted as a result of the fall: “You shall have desire for your husband, but he will dominate you” (or rule over you) (Gn 3, 16). In other words, the domination and subordination of women is not part of God’s plan for creation, but is the result of sin. Male and female were created equal, “of the same stuff” (from his side). In fact, the image of woman coming from the side of the man suggests that her role is to reach down and call forth the man to what is higher, for he came from the mud of the earth, the soil, while she came from a higher place. But the history of humanity is a history of oppression, including the oppression of women. 

Now, the entire Church is woman, the New Israel, the Bride of Christ, and she has been given authority, but the exercise of this authority is to be entirely unlike that of the gentiles: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20, 25-28).

Furthermore, the entire Church is “priest”. In the evening prayer for Thursday within the octave of Easter, the Church prays: “Almighty God, ever-living mystery of unity and Trinity, you gave life to the new Israel by birth from water and the Spirit, and made it a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people set apart as your eternal possession. May all those you have called to walk in the splendor of the new light render you fitting service and adoration.” Each of the baptized is anointed priest, prophet, and king, and so with regard to the royal priesthood of the faithful, gender is irrelevant–certainly not an impediment. The entire Church is a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pt 2, 9). And so the Church as a whole is a priestly people and at the same time bride and mother (female); for it is the entire congregation that offers gifts to be consecrated. The congregation are not simply passive observers, but active agents, priests offering their gifts, their labors, their sufferings and toil, their bread and wine, placed at the foot of the altar; the ministerial priest offers it on behalf of the entire congregation, of which he too is a part. Christ receives those gifts and changes them into himself, and returns them to us as our food. In consuming the Bread of Life, we become Christ, that is, all our matter becomes Christ–the cosmos becomes Christ in us. 

So it seems there is no incongruity between priesthood and womanhood, for the entire Church is both woman and priest. Indeed, the priest is the icon of Christ, but Adam prefigures Christ, and Adam (zakar and neqebah) exists as the image or eikon of God who became flesh in Christ, “…a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 7, 17). The original icon that Adam is includes both male and female. The Church cannot be understood except in relation to Christ, for she is his body, and thus woman cannot be understood except in relation to Christ. The woman that is the Church is the sacrament of Christ, and she participates in his priesthood.

One year during a Confirmation class in which we were talking about the sacraments, one clever young lady put up her hand and asked: “Why is it that men are able to receive all seven sacraments, but women have access to only six?” That was a brilliant way of formulating the question. I did not have time to go into a detailed explanation of the reason the Roman Church does not ordain women, for it would not do justice to the precise formulation of her question anyway. Moreover, it is increasingly difficult for me to see any genuinely compelling reason for the exclusion of women from the sacrament of Holy Orders. Perhaps the theology of sexual complementarity, focused exclusively on the sexual act itself according to the strict categories of activity and passivity, a model currently employed to maintain an all male priesthood, is really a theologically sophisticated rationalization of an outdated sexist divide. 

Cosmic Restoration

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Peter, do you love me? Then feed my lambs.

Today it is very common to confuse love with sentimentality. Genuine love involves willing the good of another, and that willing may be accompanied by positive sentiments or it may not be. Good feelings towards another are really not part of the essence of genuine love. A true sign of love is the willingness to sacrifice for the other. A genuine love of Christ reaches out to others; it does not stay inside, but seeks out the lost, the wounded, the poor and the oppressed, which is precisely what we see in the life of Christ. 

Another popular tendency is to confuse holiness with sanctimony. I’ve noticed that I hesitate to use the word “holiness” when teaching, because the word conjures up images of sanctimonious individuals with folded hands and a serious demeanour, but who are indifferent to social outreach. 

Holiness is love, it is charity, and love seeks the lowest place, it descends to whatever level is required in order to reach the person to be loved. A priest friend asked me recently: Where can God be found? He pointed out that if we read the New Testament carefully, we see that God is found in the sewers; always in the lowest places. God the Son descended and dwelt among us, and on Holy Saturday he descended further to the utmost regions of hell’s darkness. That is what holiness is like; that is what the divine love is like. Sanctimony, however, is something different. It does not seek the lowest place, but the highest place. And piety as well is not quite the same as holiness. A person may be devotional, reciting prayers, chaplets, novenas, observing religious laws, in love with religious things, churches, basilicas, etc., but if this is genuine piety, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, then it will bear fruit in genuine social outreach. If it is false, it will remain closed in on itself.  

Genuine holiness is inclined to descend to the lowest places, to those places where most people are not willing to go; for if we love God, we love all who belong to God, and everything that God has created belongs to God. If we love God and not merely things associated with God, our fundamental desire that drives every one of our choices will be the desire to see God loved, adored, and glorified. That is what justice is according to the New Testament. Justice (justification) is the restoration of all things to their proper order, which is joyful and grateful subjection to God. The love of justice is the desire to see all things restored in Christ, who in turn has no other food than the praise, love, adoration, and glorification of God the Father. 

Christ loved those who were murdering him. His passion and death were the consummation of the world’s injustice. But the most perfect rectification of that injustice is to see all of Christ’s enemies turn towards him and love him in gratitude, to finally recognize him and to praise, adore, and glorify him forever. Without that, there is no justice, but perpetual injustice and disorder; with that, however, there is the perfection of justice, the perfect victory over sin, very much like the story of St. Maria Goretti. Her murderer spent 27 years in prison, asked for forgiveness and afterward became a Capuchin brother. That’s a small scale example of Christ’s victory over evil. 

And that is the universal and cosmic justice mentioned in the second reading: 

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever! (Rev 5, 11ff). 

What is interesting about this verse is that it says every creature, every created thing (pan ktisma), in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea, which includes not only every man and angel, but every sea creature, fish, dolphin and shark, etc., every plant, every tree, every created thing will in the end bless, honour, and glorify God forever and ever. And so the love of God includes a love and reverence for the earth and an awareness of the way each creature manifests and praises God (Dan 3, 56-82).

A genuine love of God is accompanied by the awareness that all things came to be through the Word (Logos), and so all things carry within themselves some reflection of the Word, just as every work of art has a trace of the artist in it–all creatures are inexhaustible words of the Word, and as St Paul says, every creature longs to share in the freedom of the children of God (Rom 8, 21). The entire cosmos longs for justice (redemption), which means it longs for Christ. And Christ’s resurrection is that victory over death, the perfect victory over injustice, and that victory is a process, a movement, that has begun and will in the end be achieved (Mt 13, 31-32). 

Descending to the Lowest Place

A Reflection on Holy Thursday
Deacon Douglas McManaman

Also published here

What is so important about Holy Thursday night is the explicit connection between the institution of the Eucharist and a life of service, that is, the link between the sacrament and works of mercy, works of charity, which includes the commitment to social justice in all its forms. An ardent love of the Eucharist alongside relative indifference to those who suffer is a love that is essentially a farce. 

Christ washes the feet of the Apostles, the dirtiest part of the body, a task reserved for slaves. The life of Christ was a descent. God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, descended and “set up his tent” among us and took the form of a slave, so it is fitting that at this time he would engage in the work of a slave, namely washing feet. All of us without exception are to descend to the level of slaves (Gk: doulou); for the only way to ascend to God is through a descent to the lowest place. God, like water, always seeks the lowest place. 

I am reminded of a dream I once had early on in my career as a teacher. I was teaching in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto (a very broken neighborhood) and that year I was assigned a period of chaplaincy. The Vice Principal, a very good man, had just lost his father, and he was struggling with this loss as well as with a group of rather cantankerous staff members who were making his life miserable. One night–it must have been close to 30 years ago–I dreamt I was in a barn. I went to the barn door, the top part of which was open, and looked out. The entire pasture was covered in dung, feces, or cow manure. Over to my left was a beautiful stallion, standing deep in the manure. There was a woman next to the stallion, slightly older than I, but not by much (I was in my 30s), and she grabbed the hoof of the stallion, like a farrier, and with her hand would scoop up the dung and throw it on the ground. She kept doing that. She then looks over at me and, with a bit of consternation in her voice that I was just watching her, calls me by name and tells me to get out there and help her. And so I did. 

That was the dream. When I woke up, I knew exactly what it meant. The woman, I was convinced, was Mary, Our Lady. In that dream, however, she was more like an older sister, and she spoke to me with genuine familiarity. The stallion, I knew immediately, was a symbol of that Vice Principal who was going through a very difficult period in his life, with the loss of his father and the frustrations of having to deal with a very cynical group of teachers on staff. My job was to help her tend to him, wash his feet, serve him, keep him company in his difficulties, encourage him, keep the “crap” that was being spread around from discouraging him. I am reminded of that dream every time I drive to a certain small town in Ontario, for there is a barn on the way that looks just like the one in my dream. 

We receive Christ’s body in order to become what we eat–Christ. But Christ lost his status, and in first century Palestine, status was everything. He lost it because he had table fellowship with those whom the religious leaders would have nothing to do with– prostitutes, tax collectors, sinners who fail to observe the requirements of the law because they don’t know the law, etc. To share a meal is to enter into intimate communion with all those at table, in this case with those considered to be forsaken by God. Genuine love of the Eucharist will therefore translate into love of others; if not, it is not love of the Eucharist, but love of something else in some way related to the Eucharist, i.e., ambiance, candles, quiet, etc. 

English poet and WWI British army chaplain G. Studdert Kennedy warned of those clergy who yearned to keep religion indoors. In 1920, Studdert Kennedy wrote:  

The cry that is often raised, that we are going to secularize religion and take the clergy away from their purely “spiritual work”, is the cry of the man who dare not face the Cross. He wants to keep his Christ forever standing amid the lilies of the altar, with the sweet incense of worship rising around him, a weekly refuge from the distraught and vulgar world. He wants to lock Christ up in the Tabernacle, to keep Him in the silence of the secret place, where men must go down on their knees before they touch Him. But Christ wants to come out into the market-place, and down to the streets; He wants to eat and drink with prostitutes, to be mocked and spit upon by soldiers. He wants to call the dishonest trader from his office desk; to stand at his lathe beside the workman; and to bend with the mother over the washtub in the city of mean streets. He wants to go out into the world, that beauty and goodness and truth – beautiful things, good people, and true thought – may grow up around Him wherever He goes. You cannot keep Christ in your churches; He will break them into pieces if you try. He will make for the streets in spite of you, and go on with His own work; defying dead authorities, breaking down tyrannies, destroying shams, declaring open war against a Godless world. And wherever He goes the true Church will go with Him – the Church of those who are forgiven because they are bearing the sins of the world, and have learned how to forgive.

We are called to discover Christ in the Eucharist precisely in order that we might more readily perceive him everywhere. The Blessed Sacrament leads us, “not to a localization” (Studdert Kennedy), but to a deeper sense of the presence of God everywhere in the world, in and among the sick, the poor, the forgotten, and in and among all creation, every part of which sings the praises of God (Dan 3, 56-82). 

Our Wounds Heal

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Holy week begins, and it is the holiest week of the year. This week brings us into the heart of the mystery of suffering. A mystery, in theology, is something that is knowable or intelligible, but it is inexhaustible. It is infinitely knowable, which means it can be understood more and more, but without end. And the reason that suffering is a mystery is that God, who is the unutterable mystery, joined a human nature to himself and in doing so entered into human suffering. He joined us in our suffering, out of love for us; for if we truly love someone, we do not allow them to suffer alone. Their suffering causes us great sorrow, and so we long to join them in their suffering. And our suffering causes God a sorrow that is greater than we can possibly conceive–for God is Love–, and this sorrow is visible in the life of Christ who is the Word of the Father, who is everything that the Father can say about himself. This divine sorrow is visible in his passion and death. Christ came to enter into human suffering so that we may always find him in the midst of our own darkness. And we do find him, if we look for him there. Even if we don’t find him there at the time of our deepest suffering, we will see him in retrospect, if we look hard enough.

I have been through some difficult times in my own life, as have you all. Many of you have endured worse than I have, but I’ve had my share of situations that were unjust and frustrating, and they gave rise to a justified anger. I had no explanation for it at the time, however, the anger was there and it was real. But one Sunday after Mass, I was approached by an older man who wanted to talk, and this was a man who suffered far more than I did, and had been carrying so much more anger than I had been carrying. I soon realized that if I had not been suffering as I was at the time and had not the wounds from which that anger arose in me, I would not have been able to listen to him, to hear him, to understand him. I would not have been able to connect with him, and he would have been left in his sorrow, to endure it by himself, because he would know at the deepest level that I was not there with him in his own suffering. But I was there with him to some extent, because I had experienced something similar. And because he was heard, because he was understood, he experienced a degree of healing. You could say my wounds helped bring him healing, even though his suffering and wounds were greater than mine. 

And that’s what St. Peter meant when he wrote: “By his wounds we have been healed”. Christ’s wounds heal us. If our wounds help to heal others, it is only because they are a sharing in his wounds. He knows our suffering because he’s endured worse, and he is God, and God is not supposed to suffer. But he does. And he chose to suffer with us and in us, imparting to our suffering life-giving power. We never suffer alone, and we will discover, if we have not already, that we have never suffered alone. Suffering and even death will not have the final word over your life or my life, because Christ entered into it and he rose from the dead. At the end of our sufferings will be the fullness of eternal life, and an eternal friendship with him who loved us so much that he drew close to us. 

Juridical Thinking and Divine Mercy

Reflection for the 4th Sunday of Lent
Deacon Douglas McManaman

Published at Where Peter Is

We are all familiar with the parable of the prodigal son, so I would like to focus on just a few key points from this text to bring out its radical nature. The younger son, as we all know, begins to treat his father as if he were dead by demanding his share of the property that he will inherit upon his father’s death–he wants it now. When he finally comes to his senses after reducing himself to poverty, he makes plans to return to his father and formulates a proposal that he will deliver upon his return; he is going to confess his sin and declare that he is no longer worthy to be called “his son” and will ask to be treated as a hired hand.

The father sees him from a distance and immediately goes out to meet him, but the father cuts him off in mid sentence, allowing him to confess his sins, but he does not allow his son to articulate his proposal. Instead, he is restored to his original position and given the signet ring that permits him to sign cheques–a gesture of tremendous trust. Finally, they celebrate with a fatted calf: “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” Now, the dead do not bring themselves back to life. So, who brought him back to life? Who found him? This is an important implication I will return to.

The elder son who resents all this treatment represents the attitude of the religious leaders, the Pharisees and scribes, as well as the attitude of a vast number of the faithful who still operate out of a juridical or legalistic mindset, that is, within a transactional model which says: If you will give me X, then I will give you Y in return; but if you don’t give me X, I won’t give you Y. That’s the model we understand most easily, because it is a natural business model. Unfortunately, it is a model that has been brought into the religious sphere, and that’s why the elder son just cannot understand his father’s behaviour towards the younger son who squandered his inheritance, and that’s why the scholars of the law, the religious leaders, did not understand Jesus—they were legalists. And that’s why most people tend not to understand not only this parable but other parables of the kingdom of God, like the workers in the vineyard, in which Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a landowner who goes out early and hires labourers to work all day in the vineyard for a single denarius; he returns at 9 o’clock to hire more workers, and again at noon and then at 3, and then at 5 o’clock, each time hiring more laborers. At the end of the day, he pays each worker a single denarius, the same amount whether they’ve been working all day or just since the evening, which caused great resentment among those who worked all day. 

Most people struggle with these parables because they think within a juridical paradigm, a legalistic model in which a transaction is measured by fairness; hence, legal justice becomes the principal value. But the fundamental value of the gospel proclaimed by Christ’s entire life is mercy. Christ, who is God the Son, reveals the divine mercy, which transcends justice and is utterly incomprehensible. If one insists on reading the New Testament within a juridical model, one will distort the gospel, at which point it is no longer extraordinarily good news, and this will do a great deal of damage to the religious lives of the faithful, which for centuries has happened and is still happening in many places. 

The good news of the gospel is the revelation of the absolute and incomprehensible mercy of God: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost (apololos)” (Lk 19, 10). The Greek verb appolumi means ‘to destroy’, and the noun form appoleia is ‘destruction’, and so the meaning is that the Son of Man has come to seek out and save those who have destroyed their lives. 

Where can God be found? We naturally believe he is found in the highest places, basilicas with ornate and breathtaking interiors-and these have their place; but the Son of Man descended to the sewers. It was this descent to the level of the swine that brought the prodigal son back to life. Our God is found in the lowest places; for Jesus had table fellowship with outcasts, the poor, the sick, sinners, tax collectors, etc. He came to liberate them from the bad news, the lie, that they were forsaken by God. Table fellowship brings about a profound intimacy between all those at the table. The very idea of the Pharisees and scribes sharing a meal with those with whom Jesus kept company was simply unthinkable; status was everything in first century Palestine, and Jesus lost that status by associating with the poor, the lame, tax collectors, sinners, etc.  

Now, in this 15th chapter of Luke where we find the prodigal son, there are two other parables of the divine mercy, and they are there for a reason: we can misinterpret the prodigal son and mistakenly believe that the father showed mercy because the son first made a decision to return on his own. But that would be to miss the entire point of the parable; for the son was dead, and what is dead does not move. Hence, right before this parable are two others that are intended to make such a misreading less likely. I’m referring to the parable of the lost sheep, who wanders from the fold and is lost and cannot find his way back, unlike the prodigal son who does find his way back home. All the sheep can do is bleat, and hopefully the Shepherd will hear the bleating and find it, put it on his shoulders and take it back to the fold, which is what happened because the Shepherd actually goes out looking for the lost sheep. 

However, this gets better; for if the sheep cries out, it means it is alive. But what if the one who is lost (destroyed) cannot cry out in the dark for help, or cannot get up and make his or her way back home? What if this person has turned his or her back on God completely, lives in utter darkness, and is spiritually dead? We have the parable of the lost coin: “What woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it?” 

A coin is a piece of metal. It is inert, it is dead. It does not cry out nor make its way home. The mercy of God is compared this time to a woman who will search the house carefully and will not stop until she finds that lost and inert piece of matter. That’s what our God is like, compared this time to a woman because women don’t give up. More importantly, though, God does not wait for us to take the initiative and return; rather, she loves us first and goes out looking for the lost, the dead, the forsaken, those who live in darkness, and will not stop searching until she finds them.

You and I are where we are in our faith life not by virtue of anything we have done, but purely on the basis of God’s unutterable mercy. I was fortunate to have had a priest friend in my youth who would emphasize that repeatedly, but that isn’t typical. Today, there are many Catholic writers, podcasters and preachers who are moralizers, legalists, who seem to reduce the faith to a set of moral proscriptions, usually centering on issues of sexual ethics, and who think within a transactional paradigm. But as St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, we are not saved by our works: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2, 8-9). In my experience, a large percentage of the faithful have unwittingly adopted semi-Pelagianism, believing that grace has entered our lives as a result of some initial good act of the will and as a reward for that action. But our cooperation with grace is itself a grace. 

Faith is the grace that allows us to trust and to hope in the divine mercy. That’s what saves. Nothing frustrated Jesus more than people’s lack of trusting faith, which leads to fear, anxiety, and the abuse of authority, which in turn generates resentment and division, all rooted in a refusal to trust divine providence. But there was nothing that pleased Jesus more than finding that trusting faith in others, such as the Syrophoenician woman or the Roman Centurion, the woman with a hemorrhage, or the blind man naked on the road. That faith is what allowed Christ to work miracles in their lives and in the lives of those for whom they were interceding. Many of us are worried about our sons or daughters who have turned their backs on God and are now apparently lost and perhaps spiritually dead. If we believe in the God that Christ revealed, we know that fear is useless; in fact, it is harmful. It can cause us to do things that only alienate us from our children. If we learn to trust in the all-powerful and all-knowing God who pursues the lost and does not stop until he finds what he’s looking for, then there is nothing for us to worry about, for he will find them and bring them to himself in ways that we cannot think of on our own.