Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

“What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?” (Matthew 18:12.)

Saint Jerome offers the following insight on this verse from today’s Gospel proclamation:

““See that you do not despise one of these little ones,” he is calling us to be merciful. Then he adds the parable of the ninety-nine sheep left in the mountains and the one stray that because of its great weakness could not walk. The good shepherd carried it on his shoulders to the rest of the flock. This, some say, is the shepherd “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” For that reason he descended to earth: to save the one sheep that had perished, that is, the human race. Others think that by the ninety-nine sheep should be understood the number of the righteous and by the one sheep the number of the sinners, according to what he said in another place: “I have come not to call the righteous but the sinners; for it is not the healthy who have need of the physician but those who are ill.”” (Commentary on Matthew, 3.)

Collect

O God,
Who have shown forth Your salvation
to all the ends of the earth,
grant, we pray,
that we may look forward in joy
to the glorious Nativity of Christ.
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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