Scripture Study

Understanding scripture can offer a new perspective on ordinary life.

Consider how the parable of the woman who had ten coins and lost one challenges us to biblical virtue and compassion that does not rest, lights lamps, searches, prays, until alienated members of our families and communities are again whole.

“Here is the parable: A woman had ten coins and lost one. She became extremely anxious and agitated about the loss and began to search frantically and relentlessly for the lost coin, lighting lamps, looking under tables, and sweeping all the floors in her house. Eventually she found the coin and … threw a party whose cost far exceeded the value of the coin she had lost.

Why such anxiety and such joy over the loss of a coin …value of a dime? The answer lies in the symbolism of numbers: in her culture, nine was not a whole number; ten was a whole number. Both the woman’s anxiety of losing the coin and her joy in finding it have little to do with the value of the coin but with the value of wholeness; a certain wholeness in her life had been fractured and only by finding the coin could it be restored.”

Excerpt taken from Sacred Fire, A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity, by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser