Tuesday 10 December 2024
Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto
Isaiah 40:1-11. The Lord our God comes in strength – Psalm 95(96):1-3, 10-13. Matthew 18:12-14.
Comfort my people
Lovers of Handel’s Messiah will recognise the beautiful first words of today’s reading from Isaiah, ‘Comfort my people, comfort them’. And although the oratorio has many references to the sheep and lamb imagery well known to Christians, Handel doesn’t come back to, or use, the final verse of today’s first reading, ‘Like a shepherd he tends his flock; he gathers the lambs in his arms, he carries them in his bosom, gently leading those that are with young’.
It is an image of comfort to relish. The great God for whom ‘every valley will be raised up, every mountain and hill laid low’, as if for a royal procession, is presented as a person penetratingly concerned with care for his people, us. And the Gospel concurs: if we stray, we will be found, for the shepherd is interested in the individual just as much as the people altogether.
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