During the spring of 1997, I spent about three months in Arizona working with a missionary team. We gave a series of talks at a parish in Tolleson while living in Chandler, about 35 miles to the east. The drive took approximately fifty minutes each way, without traffic. One day, after a very busy schedule, we drove to Tolleson to give a talk on conversion and repentance in preparation for a penance service planned for our next session.
When we arrived, only one person was there: a lady who had heard about the talks and was attending for the first time. She received the talk very well. At the end, she shared how it had helped her recognize God’s immense love for her and how He had been pursuing her throughout her life. She even gave us money for gas, which we desperately needed, since the warning light had been on since we left.
On the drive back, we discussed the evening, and I expressed my disappointment that no one else had shown up. I even questioned the point of driving all that way for just one person. Ramon, the person in charge of the team, was a very humble man with a deep experience of faith. He told me, “Justino, the Lord gave His blood on the Cross for each one of us as individual persons. He did not die for an anonymous mass of people. God gives all His attention to the conversion of one person alone, and so our mission is to announce the good news of God’s love, even if it is only to one person.”
His words were a lesson for me. There I was, a seminarian preparing to become a shepherd of souls, caught up in an utilitarian, triumphalist view of the mission to announce the Gospel. That experience helped me understand the profound meaning of today’s Gospel: “There will be more joy in heaven over ONE sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”
The Unexplainable Love of God
There is no other page in the Gospel that displays more clearly the unexplainable love of God and the zeal He has for the soul of each individual person. Only God would risk leaving ninety-nine “perfect” sheep to go after the “bad one” that had gone astray. Only God would risk His life for the salvation of one person alone. Indeed, I am convinced that Ramon was right! When Christ gave His life and entered His Paschal Mystery in order to open the gates of Heaven to all those who accept His mercy, He did not do so for an anonymous mass of unknown people or for an abstract group of men and women called “humanity.” Giving His life on the Cross was His way of going after every individual soul afflicted by sin and by the fear of death, to bring it back to the sheepfold of His Church, where that soul can enjoy eternal life and total communion with Him.
You, Personally
To you who read this reflection, I say that God loves you as an individual person! He died on the Cross thinking about you personally. He knows who you are, knows what makes you suffer. And, He knows why you go astray, trying, through your own efforts, to be good and yet finding yourself unable to do so, thus feeling even more estranged from Him. He knows your weaknesses and inabilities. Indeed, He is that shepherd who is searching for you in your individual uniqueness, seeking to find you, carry you on His shoulders, and show you the immense joy He experiences at having found you and made it possible for you to find Life in Him.
As we reflect on these readings, let us ask the Lord to give us the grace to believe that we are special to Him and that He loves us in a unique and exclusive way. Let us ask Him to allow us to share in the joy He experiences when we abandon ourselves to Him and allow ourselves to be found by Him. Finally, let us ask for the grace to remain always attentive to His voice and to know that, no matter how far we may have gone astray, He will always be searching for us until He finds us and gives us His Life.
God bless you all!
