Philippians 3:3-8 / Luke 15:1-10
I seek only Christ: All else counts as nothing.
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How dedicated to Christ and his work are we? "Alas for those who never sing, but die with their music within them." Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Saint Willibrord
Feast Day November 7
Willibrord set out with 11 disciples for the Netherlands.
They became missionaries to the Frisians. On the way back from Denmark he was
shipwrecked on Heligoland, an island controlled by Radbod. There he confronted
pagan superstitions by slaughtering sacred animals and by loudly baptizing
three people in a pool where absolute silence was required. To appease his god,
an angry Radbod martyred one of Willibrord’s party. Then the king summoned
Willibrord and upbraided him.
The king demanded to know why he had violated their sacred
places and insulted their god. The herald of truth answered him with steady
courage: “O king, you do not adore God but the devil. He has foully deluded you
so that he can thrust your soul into everlasting fire. For there is no God but
one. He created sky, earth, sea, and everything that is in them. Whoever
worships him with true faith will have life forever. I urge you finally to
renounce that foolish delusion of your ancestors, and to believe in the one
Almighty God and Our Lord Jesus Christ. I call on you to be baptized in the
font of life and wash away all your sins. Then with all wickedness and
wrongdoing cast away from you, you may live as a new man in all reasonableness,
righteousness and holiness. If you do this you will win an eternal life of
glory with God and his saints. But if instead you reject the path of salvation,
then be most assured that you will suffer eternal tortures and hellish flames
along with the devil to whom you pay court.”
Astounded, the king replied: “I see that you truly had no
fear of our threats, and that your words match your deeds.” Although he refused
to believe in the truth that Willibrord preached, still he respectfully sent
him back to Pepin.
In 715, Radbod regained Lower Frisia and temporarily undid
much of Willibrord’s work. However, after the king’s death in 719, Willibrord
with the aid of Boniface repaired the damage. In his remaining years he planted
the church there so firmly that he earned the title “Apostle of the Frisians.”
Willibrord died in 739 on retreat at Echternach, Luxembourg, a monastery that
he had founded.
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As a Jew, Paul could be proud of many things: born as a member of the chosen people and circumcised; as a Pharisee, secure in the strict observance of the Law... Yet all these had proven to be not advantages but obstacles to encountering Christ: instead, they had made him a persecutor of Christ; the Law had made him a prisoner of the Law rather than a servant of God. And now he is happy that, by the grace of God, he has discovered the foolishness of the cross. God has found him; Christ has become his riches, and all the rest doesn’t matter.
Quite often we misplace things. Not just anything but things that we need to use, things that have some kind of sentimental value to us, and things that might not belong to us even. As much as we are careful to keep those things, there are times when out of carelessness or forgetfulness, or distraction that we misplace those things. And when we realize that they are missing, we embark on a frantic search for those things. A good example would be the keys or the wallet.
When those kinds of things are lost, we will feel the anxiety that our security is at risk. In the gospel, Jesus told a parable of a search - a search for a lost sheep and a search for a lost coin. We may think that the parable may not make much sense as we would measure the worth of one sheep over ninety-nine sheep and one coin over nine coins.
But Jesus wants to point out to us that that is how God feels when one of His children is lost. God feels the urgency of an immediate all-out search. But the search can only take place when we are willing to be sent out for the search. But if we don't feel that anxiety or urgency, then nothing will be found.
Yet we must also remember that when we get lost in the jungle of life, we would also wish that someone would care enough to come and look for us and give us back some hope. Let us feel the anxiety and urgency of those who are lost in life. In looking for them and helping them, we will also find our way to God.
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Let us Pray: Lord our God, we know that Jesus came for everybody, yet he wanted to find back the very one given up by people: the tax collector, the sinner, the prodigal. Do not allow us in our zeal for what is right and good to lose sight of this one person who was written off by people, yet who merited the special concern of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
