Thursday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
November 7, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110724.cfm

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Or what woman having ten coins and losing one
would not light a lamp and sweep the house,
searching carefully until she finds it?
And when she does find it,
she calls together her friends and neighbors
and says to them,
‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’ 
In just the same way, I tell you,
there will be rejoicing among the angels of God
over one sinner who repents.
Luke 15:8-10

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Today’s powerful Gospel passage follows on yesterday’s theme of rejoicing. Don’t we all know how it feels to lose or misplace something that’s very important to us? How many times in my life have I said my three Hail Mary’s and the Prayer to St. Anthony!!!

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
In prayer, I have often placed myself beside the woman of the coins, to assess her emotions as she searches and then finds. Note the essential dimension of her discovery – she gathers her friends and REJOICES! She teaches us that faith expresses and enriches itself in community.

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Poetry: Homemaker God – Irene Zimmerman, OSF

The Homemaker God has come to my house
to search for the lost coin of me
which I, in my miserly morning,
thinking this frugal and wise
and worthy of praise and grace,
hid in a safe “good place.” 

The Homemaker God has taken her broom
and swept from attic to basement,
moved cupboards and dressers,
stripped beds, emptied drawers—
now she’s checking each pantry shelf
for the silver coin of myself. 

The Homemaker God will find me, I trust—
she knows how to raise dust.

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Music: O Breath of Life, Come Sweeping Through Us” by Bessie Porter Head (1849–1936)