By Mary Wilder Tileston

      He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer thee.
      ISAIAH 30:19

      THAT Was the Shepherd of the flock; He knew
      The distant voice of one poor sheep astray;
      It had forsaken Him, but He was true,
      And listened for its bleating night and day.

      And thou, fallen soul, afraid to live or die
      In the deep pit that will not set thee free,
      Lift up to Him the helpless homeward cry,
      For all that tender love is seeking thee.
      ANNA L. WARING

      OUR Divine Shepherd followed after His lost sheep for three and thirty years, in a way so painful and so thorny that He spilt His heart's blood and left His life there. The poor sheep now follows Him through obedience to His commands, or through a desire (though at times but faint) to obey Him, calling upon Him and beseeching Him earnestly for help; is it possible that He should now refuse to turn upon it His life-giving look? Will He not give ear to it, and lay it upon His divine shoulders, rejoicing over it with all His friends and with the angels of Heaven? For if our Lord ceased not to search most diligently and lovingly for the blind and deaf sinner, the lost drachma of the Gospel, till He found it, how is it possible that He should abandon him who, as a lost sheep, cries and calls upon his Shepherd?
      LORENZO SCUPOLI