Lent 2019

 

Lenten Reflection: March 18, 2019

STM Lenten ImageDN9:4B-10  and  LK 6:36-38

What a beautiful greeting in our first reading today -- Lord, great and awesome God, you who keep your merciful covenant toward those who love you and observe your commandments!  It all sounds so reassuring.  Merciful covenant helps us to know that God keeps the  promise of covenant and always takes the first step in  forgiveness.  Jesus affirms this as he says to his disciples, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” 

Our God is not a God of vengeance, waiting to pounce on us as soon as we stray from the straight and narrow.  Our God exemplifies what you would expect of a mother or father. Remember what the Lord said to the Israelites, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget yet I will not forget you.  Behold I have graven you on the palms of my hands.”

God is a God of Compassion and forgiveness.  Do you remember Jesus murmuring through crucified lips, “Father forgive them.”  God loves the sinner even while he or she is still a sinner.  And God always takes the first step in forgiveness.  God doesn’t wait aloof and aloft in solitary splendor till you come to your senses.  God runs to meet you.  In God’s own assurance, “there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  The Lord continues to draw us by his love . . .his great unimaginable love.  Mercy . . . Forgiveness . . . Love.

Pope Francis, is trying to call today’s church to be a model of Christ’s mercy and forgiveness.  He washes the feet of prisoners, he wants to speak with people who live together but are not married, he wants to understand our gay brothers and sisters, and  he wants to listen to the divorced and remarried.  Pope Francis wants to follow Christ and he espouses a more gentle approach to what has been considered “sin,” in contrast to those who will not veer from hardline condemnation. 

We are told to stop judging, stop condemning, forgive and you will be forgiven.

This Lenten season, let us try to be open to listening to others we may have condemned, let us minister to those who feel ousted by the church; who have been called sinners. Not far from you is someone who is afraid and needs your courage, who is lonely and needs your presence, someone who is hurt and needs your healing, feels unloved and needs your touching, is old and has a need to feel that you care.  And help us to see from our own lives that God’s mercy is limitless, not bounded by myopia. 

Give and gifts will be given to you.  The measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you. 

Bernadette DiGiulian '83 M.Div.

Bernie is a member of the STM Community.