Third Sunday After Pentecost The Gospel Luc.15.v.1. Sunday Meditation: A Plaine Path-way To Heaven Thomas Hill 1634

MASTER of Female Half-lengths 

Madonna and Child 

c. 1530

GOSPEL Luke 15: 1-10 

At that time, the publicans and sinners drew near unto Jesus to hear Him: and the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them. And He spoke to them this parable, saying: What man is there of you that hath a hundred sheep, and if he shall lose one of them, doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert, and go after that which was lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, lay it upon his shoulders rejoicing an coming home, call together his friends and neighbors, saying to them: Rejoice with me because I have found my sheep that was lost? I say to you that even so there shall be more joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need no penance. Or what woman having ten groats, if she lose one groat doth not light a candle and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it? And when she hath found it, call together her friends and neighbors, saying: Rejoice with me because I have found the groat which I had lost? So I say to you, there shall be joy before the Angels of God upon one sinner doing penance.

Sunday Meditation 

Fowlers to catch birds with their net, do use many cunning inventions: amongst which one is, they do not appear themselves in their own likeness, but take a live bird of the Kind of those they would catch,and tie it within the compass of their net, where unto other birds of the same kind will resort, and so they catch them in their net;  otherwise if they appear in their own likeness they fright them away and lose their labor.

Almighty God when he did cast the net of the law of Decalogue or ten Commandments upon the mount Sinai, to catch the people in obedience thereof, he did it with great Majesty & terror, with terrible lightning, thunders & smoke in his own likeness, that is to say like a God of Majesty and terror: but the people were much frightened thereat,and said unto Moses; Speak thou unto us,and we will hear thee: (because he was a bird of their own feather) let not God speak unto us, least we die.

Wherefore when God was to give us the new Law, he sent his only begotten Son to preach & proclaim it unto us, not in the terror and Majesty of a God as he did before, but in the form and likeness of a man, calling himself the Son of man, to catch men in the net of his obedience, conversed lovingly & familiarly with men, taught, and instructed them as a man, cured the sick and diseased,confirmed his doctrine with miracles, did good unto all, harm unto none: & though the people for his doctrine,life,and miracles,could not but esteem him as a Prophet and a most good man,and a man of God, yet still a man, and a bird of their own feather, & though indeed he was no sinner but purity itself, and impeccable,yet as St. Paul sayth, he appeared in the likeness of the flesh of sin; that is to say, with all the infirmities of man, sin only excepted, as if he were a sinner: by which art or invention he caught so many men as St.Peter did fishes till his net was ready to break again, which was so many as to make up the number of the Catholic or Universal Church throughout all the world; whereas in the net of the old Law he could catch but the Nation of the Jews only, & hardly them, nor them neither to bring them to any perfection; for as St.Paul sayth, the old law brought nothing to perfection.

Amongst the rest came unto his net these publicans & sinners here in this Gospel, who came unto him not as the Scribes and Pharisees oftentimes did, to catch him in his speech, as the Gospel sayth, and to be catched of him: they came to him as the sick unto the physician, as the