Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 10, 2019

Antho­ny de Mel­lo, SJ, an Indi­an Jesuit of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry writes, “Behold God, behold­ing you and smil­ing”. I remem­ber the first time I expe­ri­enced the weight of these words in prayer. I began by imag­in­ing the love I expe­ri­ence in this earth­ly life – the love of my par­ents and clos­est friends, the love I expe­ri­ence in the won­der and intri­ca­cy of cre­ation, in watch­ing new par­ents so evi­dent­ly love their child. Then, I attempt to mul­ti­ply all of this pow­er­ful earth­ly love into infin­i­ty, the amount of love God has for me, and I am quick­ly over­whelmed. Over­whelmed, not in a way that makes me want to run from it, but, that encour­ages me to stay in the soul-fill­ing feel­ing of infi­nite love.

The Gospel read­ing ends with “In just the same way, it is not the will of your heav­en­ly Father that one of these lit­tle ones be lost.” How reas­sur­ing to read these words, to know that God wants to be close to us. One of those facts that we know, but we can eas­i­ly for­get. How­ev­er, we are human. Which means, at times, we do feel lost, dis­tant from our rela­tion­ship with a God who loves us infinitely.

In this sea­son of Advent, this Gospel pas­sage relays the mes­sages of the sea­son – the light of God’s dark­ness shines bright in the dark­ness, and hope will pre­vail. If I were this sheep, I would like­ly feel fear­ful and hope­less in being reunit­ed with my flock and shep­herd. But, what Jesus reminds us, is that God search­es for us in our dark­ness, bring­ing us back home to God’s infi­nite love.

For those of us who may feel lost, may we find hope­ful­ness in this pas­sage. For those of us who are in dark­ness, may we be on the look­out for the light of God’s love com­ing to find us. For all the rest of us, may we be bea­cons of God’s love through­out this Advent season.

Final­ly, may we rest in the prayer: “Behold God, behold­ing you and smil­ing.” Amen.