Memorial of Saint Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
A while back, I was reading this Gospel passage (Matthew 18:12-14) with some of the teens I work with. As we were reflecting on the story, I asked what everyone thought. One of my teens, a freshman, said “I just wonder about why the sheep leaves.” Honestly, since then, I haven’t been able to hear anything about lost sheep without thinking about this. What leads the sheep to go away from the shepherd and the flock?
The answer is “some thing.” There is some concrete, specific thing that makes the sheep decide that somewhere else is more appealing than the life he is currently living. In pursuit of some thing in the distance, the sheep decides to leave the safety, security, and comfort of life with the flock and the shepherd. If we are supposed to read the sheep as human beings, this becomes a reflection about what leads us away from God.
It’s very easy to make this conversation abstract – we talk about “temptation” or “sin” without putting any genuine attention into what those things actually look like in our lives. Of course we all sin. Of course we are all tempted away from God and sometimes go astray. But it’s a real disservice to ourselves in our spiritual lives if we remain abstract. It’s one thing to say, “the sheep goes astray.” It’s another thing to say, “When the sheep sees some extra tasty looking grass in the distance, it’s then that he decides that he’d rather have that grass than be with the shepherd.” In the first example, we barely know anything about what happened. In the second, we see the specific, tangible reason that the sheep leaves.
Our reflection on our sinfulness should be the same. When thinking of what draws us away from God, it shouldn’t be enough to remain abstract. In the long run, acknowledging and naming our sins and our temptations will serve us much better than being abstract and non-specific about them.
Today, let us reflect on the things that draw us away from God. Let us be as specific as possible, and name those temptations for exactly what they are. Let us do so not in order to feel discouraged about our struggles, but that we might better recognize them and work to combat them
- Marty Bagatti