During the week it was announced that the population of this country had reached over 4 million people - the highest in over 130 years. We have all sorts of statistics these days. So many people out of work - the highest or lowest in X number of years. X thousand visitors visited this scenic spot or historic moment. So many people have given up smoking since the smoking ban came into operation. We have all sorts of lists and numbers. But there is one that I don’t ever remember having heard - the number of persons who go missing in this country. Yes every now and again we do hear of someone in particular who has gone missing and we see billboards asking us have we seen this person. In Britain it is estimated that 25,000 people go missing each year and in America it is estimated that 50,000 children alone go missing.

All ages and sorts, children, middle-aged and old. Husbands, wives, single people. Working-class, middle-class and upper-class, for every sort of reason and for what seems like none, they take off. In 1990 a young man in Cork, celebrated getting his University exams with his girlfriend, goes home, takes his parents car and is never seen again. Behind they leave unbelieving, guilt-ridden anguished families who live in a mixture of hope and despair unable to accept what has happened and maybe worse still unable to grieve as you would do over a death.

Jesus speaks about losing sheep and coins. People get lost too. People can get lost in many ways. People addicted to alcohol or drugs. They are the easy ones to spot. But there are others - people who can’t settle down, people who can’t hold down a job or finish their studies. People who cannot maintain a stable relationship. People can get lost in their grief, get lost in the hurt of a broken marriage. People can get lost through some hurt that they have experienced years before. You don’t have to be ‘missing’ to be lost. They can be lost in the middle of us; lost in the bosom of a family even; lost in a parish community.

People can get lost morally and spiritually too. They are like a boat without an anchor, a ship without a compass. Some are lost through their own fault. But some are lost because there is no one to take an interest in them.

Tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes - all considered lost people in Israel 2000 years ago. All abandoned by the ‘official shepherds’. Jesus talked with them, ate with them, socialised with them. He deliberately went out of his way to meet them. He was interested in them. He didn’t wait around for them to find him. He went out to find them. And when he found them, he helped them find themselves and come back home - the home of God the Father.

We are the followers of Jesus and we follow his example.

Fr Paddy