The Lord says that He will never leave nor forsake us. To understand this from an ordinary human point of view is very difficult. The worldly mind, accustomed to living in prosperity, reasons quite differently. And it acts quite to the contrary. If a small part...
The Lord says that He will never leave nor forsake us. To understand this from an ordinary human point of view is very difficult. The worldly mind, accustomed to living in prosperity, reasons quite differently. And it acts quite to the contrary. If a small part (1%, as the parable says, if we look at it strictly mathematically) goes missing, a worldly person will never drop everything to get this percent back. Because he understands that the remaining 99% are more valuable than the 1%, and one might lose the 99% in search of the one percent. And losses are inevitable after all — that is what modern economic theory teaches us. That is what the depreciation fund is for, after all.
If something insignificantly small is lost, only a beggar will rush to look for it, because he has so little of everything that every little thing is important to him. But this, again, means that — even though he has lost something small, some kopeck — this kopeck still makes up a large percentage of what he has. But here is this holy logic of absurdity: the Lord is so rich in us, He has so many of us, and diverse, wonderful, talented, kind, smart at that — He has so many of us, yet He, like a beggar, goes after every lost, pitiful little human being. He is rich, but He is poor.
This is something very important for our faith. The Apostle says: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). Look at these semantic transitions from wealth to poverty and back. It is very important to understand this, or rather to feel it: no poverty makes sense if there is no inner wealth, and no wealth makes sense if there is no inner poverty. This is exactly what the Lord teaches us today by His holy example. An example of love, for which no metric sciences matter, for it is of unearthly origin.
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15:1 All the publicans - That is, all who were in that place.It seems our Lord was in some town of Galilee of the Gentiles, from whence he afterward went to Jerusalem, Luk 17:11.