Considering the one percent

The Roman Catholic Lectionary today offers texts which both challenge and comfort. The passage from the Prophet Isaiah is one of comfort to and for the people of Israel who find themselves captive in Babylon. Isaiah declares that God will lead them back to the destroyed and depopulated Jerusalem and the cities of Judah. The community in Babylon is reassured that God wishes to restore an intimate relationship with them. The image used for this intimacy is the shepherd carrying lambs in his arms. The focus changes from the restoration of the community, in which the individual can be an anonymous member, to the individual attention of the Shepherd to that one. The action of restoration is carried out so that each individual is received into the love and attention of God. This transcendent experience of being an individual in relationship with the Divine can challenge our sense that the problems and disasters afflicting the 99%, are being ignored. Today we remember the tragedies of Dec 6, in Halifax during WWI, when the explosion killed thousands and in Montreal, in 1989, at Ecole PolyTechnique, where 14 young women students were massacred. The Gospel of Matthew underlines the action of God towards the 1% who perhaps are more lost than we. Those who have wandered away from the flock are the object of the attention of the Shepherd. Our discipleship must also see that "not one of these is lost".