Tag: <span>forgiveness</span>

March 9, 2021February 23, 2021

Forgiven Debt

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Although the Old Testament is superficially considered by some to portray God as severe and unyielding, over and over, we see passages like today’s first reading. Azariah–otherwise known as Abednego, one of the three whom Nebuchadnezzar cast into a white-hot furnace–offers God the sacrifice of a contrite heart. He knows that this abundantly merciful God will see his repentance and look with love not only on him, but on his entire people.

The king in Jesus’ parable in the gospel is no other than the God of the Old Testament. He is abundantly merciful to his indebted servant and forgives him the massive amount that he owes. But he expects the same mercy to be mirrored in the servant, who instead treats a fellow servant with a debt to him, a much smaller debt, severely. The king’s reaction is to withdraw his offer to forgive the massive debt of the first servant.

And this king is also none other than the God of the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

God conditions our salvation on our acceptance of it, and our willingness to let Him transform us into something purified and exalted–something much greater than our sinful selves. Part of that transformation is our kindness and mercy toward those who fall short in our lives. It is well to remember that our forgiveness of others is cited over and over in the Gospels, and throughout the Bible, as a condition of our forgiveness by God.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to send His Spirit to transform your heart profoundly from one that harbors resentment, momentary or extended, into one that forgives immediately, conscious of what you yourself have been forgiven.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

March 1, 2021February 11, 2021

Forgiveness

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

We cannot escape from the fact that, over and over again, Jesus makes forgiveness of our sins depend on our forgiving others their sins.

Jesus incorporates this principle into the Our Father. He also tells the parable of the unforgiving servant, whose inability to forgive his fellow servant’s debt ultimately costs him his own forgiveness (cf. Mt. 18:21ff). And in today’s gospel, He tells us that the measure of our forgiveness will be the measure by which we are forgiven.

This theme is not one that Jesus mentions once in passing. It is one that He repeats, in different forms, again and again and again.

Why is this theme so important to Jesus?

For a clue by way of foreshadowing, we can recall how Moses, once he has become a member of the Egyptian court, sees one of his countrymen, a Hebrew, abused by an Egyptian. He is filled with rage, and he kills the Egyptian, winning for himself exile.

For Jesus, each one of us is a “countryman”–and so much more. He is passionate for our brother’s and sister’s welfare, even in small things, even when they are not in grace, more than we could know.

He does not want us holding things over our brother’s and sister’s. He wants us to love them, to forgive them. Union between persons is a priority to Him second only to the union of the Blessed Trinity, and our union with that Trinity.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus why forgiveness is so important to Him. Think of the person whom it is has been most difficult to forgive in your life. Think of that person in their weakness, neediness, and insecurity, and ask Jesus to forgive them and strengthen them. And tell Him that you let their offenses go as well.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

February 20, 2021February 4, 2021

The Great Physician

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In today’s first reading, God is not reproving His people for their sins, as He sometimes does. Rather, He is offering them hope as He calls them to conversion–hope for full restoration.

And it will come to light that this hope has a name: It is Jesus Christ. Jesus, the great Physician whom we see in today’s gospel.

It is beautiful to abandon our sins wholly, over and over again, in the sacrament of confession, thus exposing our wounds to this great Physician and allowing Him to do the work that He came to do.

Of course, the placement of these readings in Lent is no accident–it is the season of conversion.

It is interesting to reflect that, in addition to our sins, we have our simple human weaknesses. Maybe we struggle with attention span. Perhaps we don’t have as much energy for the day as we would like, or the kind of mental abilities we would like for planning and analyzing. These weaknesses can discourage us sometimes as much as our sins. People can be cruel by forming judgements of us only based on our weaknesses.

Jesus didn’t come to make us different from what we are; He didn’t come to make us good at everything. But what He does promise is that He loves us as we are, as His Father has created us. He loves us with our strengths, and with our weaknesses.

And we know that this love transforms us to participate in the divine nature itself, without taking away the particularities of our human nature, or of our own individual nature.

In the act of loving us, Jesus makes our strengths twice as valuable, and our weaknesses unimportant, as frustrating as they may sometimes be. His love itself transforms the value that we bring to the welfare of others into something beyond measure.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Consider the weaknesses that most frustrate you. Tell Jesus that you give them to Him, and ask Him to make your life valuable for His Kingdom in spite of them–with full trust and confidence that He will do so, beyond your imaginings. Then, ask Him forgiveness for the ways you neglect and offend Him in sin, and trust there too that the great Physician heals you.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

January 15, 2021January 6, 2021

Turning Point

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

It was nice of Jesus in today’s gospel to forgive the paralytic of his sins before He healed him. Nice little touch, nice add-on. Or, maybe something far, far more consequential than the healing itself.

The first reading tells us why this seemingly “easy” act of mercy on Jesus’ part was of such moment. A key statement: “But the word that they heard did not profit them.” The author is referring to the Hebrews of Exodus, who despite all God had done for them, did not heed His word in obedience.

This key phrase is reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the sower. That word, that the Hebrews did not heed, was choked by the cares and worries of this world, like the seed that fell among weeds in the parable: Fear of the Canaanites; priority on their bellies. Also, like the seed that fell on rocky ground, the word of God penetrated the hearts of the Hebrews not but superficially. “The word that they heard did not profit them.”

And the letter to the Hebrews goes on to point out again and again, poignantly, the consequence of this failure to heed: “They shall not enter my rest.”

Perhaps the sins of the paralytic were a little fib here, or minor laziness there. Or maybe, like so many, the paralytic’s sin had consisted in failing to heed the word of God due to far too many distractions and too much indifference in his life.

The consequence of indifference to God’s word is in high relief in the first reading: “They shall not enter my rest.”

Jesus would die on the cross for the paralytic, and open the gates to eternal life for him. It may be that, in response to those who approached Him on behalf of the paralytic, His act of forgiving the personal sins of the man–an act merited in the Passion to come–was the deciding moment leading to eternal life for this soul, rather than eternal condemnation.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Pray for souls. Like those who brought the paralytic to Jesus, we can bring souls before Him, that He may shower upon them His mercy. We can do this. It lies within our power. Our zeal to intercede for sinful souls can mean eternal life for them, in place of the condemnation toward which they are now heading .

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams

September 13, 2020August 28, 2020

Let It Go

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Some people love to contrast the Old Testament and the New Testament, caricaturing God in the former as a meany and in the latter as a sweet guy who just loves to hug.

In reality, both Testaments feature a Creator who is not to be messed with, whose laws hold firm and bear eternal consequences, and yet who is also mind-blowingly merciful. He not only gives us second chances, He comes up with ingenious schemes to take the hit for His own laws and open doors that we have closed for ourselves. But we must opt for those second chances. We still must conform to His way, the way of our deeper and better nature, the way He created us to be.

In the face of the mistaken tendency to pit Old Testament and New Testament against each other, Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel is nothing but the first reading repeated, but in a beautiful, easily understood story–that is, in warm, human terms. He teaches what we hear summed up earlier in the Lord’s Prayer (cf. Mt. 6:9ff): “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The simple but tough lesson: God will not forgive us our sins if we do not forgive our brothers and sisters from our heart.

Of course, this does not necessarily mean that the wound does not still cause us pain. The though of the offending person can still cause us revulsion, even physical sickness. But we do not hatch plans or desire their suffering and destruction. We leave their welfare in God’s hands and even pray that He will given them what they need, conversion if necessary, to be happy with Him one day.

The contrary attitude is one of willingly harbored resentment, by which we actively choose to desire suffering and harm for the person who has offended us, out of “justice” in return for what they have done for us.

But what is it that causes us to cling to such desires, and stubbornly refuse to let them go? Ultimately, it is attachment of our heart to created things. Sin and spiritual imperfection come from our heart attaching itself to created things, whether those things are people or possessions, or more intangible things such as our own reputation. Spiritual perfection comes from a profound relationship with God whereby He truly is all we cling to as essential.

The soul with created attachments is at risk of the sin of resentment, of not forgiving, if another person ventures to interfere with the object of its attachment.

We may think of this as another of Jesus’ tough, challenging teachings–and it is. But there is also something beautiful in this teaching that we may take for granted, that we may overlook or fail to fully appreciate: If we do let go of ill desires for others, and thus forgive them from the heart, we have the joy and freedom of knowing that God does the same for us, even though our sin has taken a baseball bat to the very order of the cosmos, to the very underpinnings of our own nature. Even though, more importantly, our sin has spat in the face of the very author of these. God’s mercy inspires awe. We do not deserve it. And yet, it is right there at the fingertips of the person willing to let go of attachment to others’ offenses.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Contemplate God’s mercy. Think of His mercy in the face of your terrible sins, but also in the face of humankind’s wholesale rejection of Him. Ask Him to show you how to be merciful, like a father showing his five-year-old how to ride a bicycle. Ask Him to help you to attach your heart and your will more and more only to Him.

Follow the Author on Twitter:
Follow @mvhaywilliams