76 countries. 18,649 views. 102 followers. 116 homilies. Those are stats from our homily blog onelostsheep.net which turned a year old today. One year ago when Kat Limcaoco-Alcuaz and I succumbed to the urgings of Chary Mercado to start a blog with “good” homilies. We had been toying with the idea for some time already but it took Chary’s persistence to get us going. So with Kat on the technical side and me in charge of content, we set to work. It wasn’t that hard to set up and we started with homilies from files that I had been storing up over the years. So this is how we introduced ourselves then:

We started this blog in response to numerous requests from friends and relatives to send them good homilies. So we figured that instead of forwarding emails and the like, we would just put up this site and fill it with as many good homilies that we could lay our hands on. The majority, if not all, are by Jesuits as that is our network.

The judgment on what is a “good” homily is completely subjective. Our tastes may be different from yours. But these are the ones that stimulated our minds, strengthened our faith and touched our hearts. 

We’re sure there are other good homilies out there and we hope we can cast our nets further out to find them. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our choices. 

We named this blog One Lost Sheep after one of our favorite parables – Luke 15:1-7

All that is still true today and we are heartened by the comments and reviews we have received in appreciation of what we started.

Our goal was to post at least one homily for the Sunday Gospel. We struggled in the early days and there were weeks where we had no homilies (especially when we were travelling). But those weeks were few and far between. Nowadays, we post two to three homilies a week. I actually find myself reading an average of five homilies every week. So I kid my Jesuit friends that I am now a “homiletic scholar”!

Most of our views are from the Philippines, North America, Australia and Italy. But we have also had views from Russia, Grenada, the Middle East, Africa, South America, the Cook Islands and ta-da – Vatican City!! Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder who in Vatican City is reading our blog.

76 countries. 18,649 views. 102 followers. 116 homilies. Those are the numbers but what truly count are the minds stimulated, the faith strengthened and the hearts touched. So here’s hoping our shepherds continue to feed good homilies to us lost sheep J