Recently, I was vacuuming my room when I heard the grating sound of a coin caught in the roller. I thought to myself, “Really? Again?” It’s the same scenario when I hear the “clunk-clunk-clunk” of change tumbling with my clothes in the dryer—“Again?”
When we hear today’s gospel, we’re moved by what lengths God goes to in order to find us. But the more amazing thing is that God does this over and over—and without a smart, eyebrow-arched “Again?”
God, a heedless shepherd, leaves the rest of the flock for a search and rescue mission. God, an impassioned housewife, turns the house upside down in order to find us. Again. And again. And again.
We expect God to be as disgusted with us as we are with ourselves when we’ve misplaced our phone or lost our keys for the umpteenth time. But that’s not the grace of God. The grace of God is as new the hundredth time we’ve gotten ourselves lost as the first.
Again? Yes. Again. Thank God!
—Fr. Martin Connell, S.J. serves John Carroll University, University Heights, OH, as professor education. He is also the Rector of the Jesuit community there.