💖 HOMILY - DECEMBER 9 💖

First Reading - Isaiah 40:1-11

Gospel - Matthew 18:12-14

There is a tenderness in today’s readings that reaches into the places where we feel tired, lost, or burdened. They invite us to experience God not as a distant ruler, but as a Father who searches, gathers, and carries His people with gentle strength.

Isaiah begins with a message of comfort—words spoken to a people who had suffered and felt abandoned. “Comfort, comfort my people,” God says. Not scold them, not judge them, but comfort them. He promises that their struggles are not the end of their story. A new path is being opened: valleys lifted, mountains lowered, rough roads smoothed. God Himself is coming to be with His people, and nothing will stop Him from reaching them.

Isaiah then gives us one of the most tender images in all of Scripture—God as a shepherd who gathers the lambs in His arms, holds them close, and leads them gently. It is a picture of God’s heart: attentive to the small, patient with the weak, and protective of the vulnerable.

This image flows seamlessly into the Gospel. Jesus tells the story of the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to search for the one that is lost. To the shepherd, the missing one is not a number; it is a beloved life. He goes into the hills, risks the journey, follows the faintest trace—because the one who wandered off still matters. And when he finds it, he rejoices more over that one than over all the rest.

Dear friends, Isaiah shows God coming to His people with tenderness. Jesus shows God seeking out the lost with determination.

Together, they remind us that no failure, no weakness, and no wandering ever places us beyond God’s desire to bring us home.

There are times when we feel like the lost sheep—when we drift from prayer, when discouragement weighs us down, when we struggle with habits we can’t seem to break, or when life’s burdens make us lose our sense of direction. In those moments, God does not wait for us to find our way back. He comes after us with love, not anger. He lifts us before He corrects us. He heals us before He sends us forward.

At the same time, these readings invite us to take on God’s heart toward others. There are people in our families, communities, and workplaces who feel unnoticed or lost—sometimes spiritually, sometimes emotionally. We prepare the way of the Lord by being instruments of His comfort, by becoming people who lift burdens, speak hope, and seek out those who feel forgotten.

A single conversation of kindness, a gesture of patience, a willingness to listen—these become ways of saying to another person, “You matter. God has not forgotten you.”

So today, we ask for the grace to allow God’s comfort to reach us and to share that comfort with others. May we recognize the Shepherd who never stops seeking us, and may we become shepherds to one another—helping those around us discover that they, too, are held in the arms of a God who does not rest until every lost sheep is found.