The gospel stories are like mirrors that help us see ourselves and what we should be, St. Asterius says in today’s readings. (Can’t find anything about him in my limited dictionaries of the saints). He’s reading the parable of the Good Shepherd, who leaves the sheep at pasture to search for the stray.

“He crosses many valleys and thickets, he climbs great and towering mountains, he spends much time and labor in wandering through solitary places until at last he finds his sheep.

And when he finds it, he does not chastise it; he does not use rough blows to drive it back, but gently places it on his own shoulders and carries it back to the flock. He takes greater joy in this one sheep, lost and found, than in all the others.”

The hidden meaning of the parable? “It teaches us that we should not look on people as lost or beyond hope; we should not abandon them when they are in danger or be slow to come to their help.”
God does not look on people as lost or hopeless. Neither should we.