"Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came to save that which was lost!"

One day a few weeks ago, when I was on retreat at nearby Enders Island, an 87 year-old priest celebrated the daily Mass. He’s one of the good ones; that is to say, he’s one of the 98% whom you will never hear about on the evening news. The modern media couldn’t care less about people like him, who have given their lives in faithful service to Christ and his Church. From the perspective of most in the modern media, faithfulness, sacrifice and commitment are not newsworthy qualities.

This particular priest has been ordained for 60 years. He’s retired (which means he doesn’t have to do anything!), but he still chooses to serve God and his people by helping at Ender’s Island and at some local parishes, much in the same way that Monsignor Struck helped out at St. Pius for so many years.

The gospel reading at the Mass he celebrated was the parable of the lost sheep, and he began his homily by joking about his 87 year-old memory, which, as the old saying goes, "ain’t what it used to be." He said that at his age many things just seem to "get lost on their own." (Perhaps some of you have had similar experiences.) For example, he said that a few days earlier he couldn’t find the remote control to his television set. He looked everywhere in his apartment: behind the sofa, on the bookcase, even in the wastebasket. Later in the day he finally came upon it—in the closet, in the pocket of his bathrobe where it "had taken itself." He said, "I know it must have taken itself to that location, because I’m certain that I didn’t put it there!"

Things can seem to get lost on their own, even though they don’t. There’s always a reason why the object isn’t where it’s supposed to be, and usually the reason has a lot to do with us. No, the remote did not jump off the coffee table, hop across the floor, open the closet door, and jump into the pocket of your bathrobe. But if you have no idea what you did with it, if you don’t know why it got lost, that may sound like a plausible explanation.

And so it can be with us human beings. There are times when we can be "lost" in life, without an awareness of why we’re in that condition. It can seem like it "just happened" for no apparent reason. We can be lost in sin, for example, without a clear awareness that what we’ve been doing is wrong. We know we’re not happy or peaceful deep down inside, but we’re not sure why. We can be lost in sorrow—as many people are at this time of the year; sometimes we may know why, at other times we may not. We can even be lost in ourselves and our own problems, absorbed in our own fears and anxieties, without recognizing the reason for that self-absorption.

But even if we don’t know why we’re lost, the fact that we’re in that condition means that there’s a choice to be made; and the options we have are 3: we can stay lost; we can deny we’re lost; or we can get "un-lost," so to speak.

The Son of God became man on Christmas Day, so that we could and would get un-lost; or, to use a more polished English expression, the Son of God became man so that we would find our way through this life to heaven, which is our true home. Have you ever wondered why nothing in this life completely satisfies? It’s because we weren’t made to live on this earth forever! We were made by God to live with God in his eternal kingdom.

But the only reason that any of us can enter that kingdom is because of the One whose birth we celebrate today. We’re all sinners; we’ve all sinned; and the debt of our sins threatens to keep us out of the kingdom. But the good news is that Jesus Christ came to pay that debt, which no one of us—which no human person—could have possibly paid. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son." Only God could do the job, and out of love the Son of God came to this planet and did it! And it’s all expressed in the name that was given to him before he was born. St. Matthew tells us in his Gospel that the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said to him, "[Your wife Mary] will conceive and bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." His name says what he was: the Savior!

Will we allow the Savior to find and save us? That’s the question of Christmas; that’s really the crucial question of life.

Jesus said in Matthew 18: 11, "The Son of Man has come to save that which was lost." (And the Lord wasn’t talking there about TV remotes; he was talking about human persons like you and me.)

I said a few moments ago that whenever we’re lost (in our sins, in our sorrows, or in problems), we can do one of three things: we can stay that way, we can allow ourselves to be found, or we can deny that we’re lost. That last one is very common these days, when personal sins—especially sins of the flesh—are looked upon as "old-fashioned" and "out-of-date" concepts. "You still believe that lying is wrong? Don’t you know?—it’s wrong only if you get caught!" "You still think sex outside of marriage is sinful? What century are you living in anyway?"

Sometimes the struggle to get un-lost begins with the struggle to admit we’re lost in the first place. It’s something like the experience I’ve had many times when I’m driving in a strange town, and can’t find the street I’m looking for. That’s when my stubborn Italian nature usually takes over: I do not like to admit that I’ve made a mistake and don’t have a clue where I am! So I will sometimes drive around for twenty minutes—my blood pressure rising every second—until I finally throw in the towel in complete frustration and ask someone for directions! Now I could have saved myself a great deal of anxiety and aggravation, if I hadn’t let it go on for so long.

And that’s the way it can be with the personal sins we’d rather not admit to.

We are all here today to worship the Jesus who came to get us "un-lost." But just coming into a church at Christmas doesn’t make it happen. A transformation needs to occur on the inside of us, and it needs to keep happening long after Christmas Day is over!

I’ll conclude my homily today by reading to you the brief testimony of someone who would say a big "Amen" to what I’ve just told you. His name is Dick Dawson, and he lives in Traverse City, Michigan. Listen to his words which I came across in a book the other day:

Lori and Cody came back to me, and a quantum leap forward brings me to this moment. I feel such gratitude for the second chance at life that I received from God, and it all began on that Christmas Eve [all those years ago].

Yet another case of the Son of God finding and saving that which was lost!