WEDNESDAY, NINETEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
Ez 9: 1-7; 10: 18-22 Ps 113: 1-6 Mt 18: 15-20
FINDING FORGIVENESS, TRUE REPENTANCE
It is human to err, but forgiveness is divine. If every good deed done for fellow humans is done for God, so too every evil done against fellow humans too is done against God. So, God alone can forgive in the true sense. We often get easily hurt by the hostile actions or adverse language used by others, especially those close to us. We disapprove of their behaviour and even we condemn them outright as totally bad people, excluding them from further contact. Breach is complete; bridge is broken. Thus, it is common that we are angry with the close ones in our life. Human Love can suddenly change into hatred, and even into violence and revenge.
Nevertheless, if we apply our mind, we can laugh at our silly behavior simply because we are not angels; we too have hurt in different levels very many people as those hurting us. If that is true, we have no right to be angry. Therefore, Jesus in his sermon the mount, upholds ‘unconditional love’ as supreme and attaches serious punishment to those who cause hatred to spread. In every hurt God is wounded since we all belong to him. For hurting anyone is hurting God primarily, and forgiveness belongs to God. Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father forgive them,” for they are not fully aware of the seriousness of their actions. He excused them to be free even from the feelings of hurt.
All the same Ezekiel reminds his fellow Israelites persisting in moral and social malice, that to take the goodness of God for granted would be totally presumptive. In God, kindness and justice are just two faces of one same reality. Only those who are marked by the salvific mark, as once in Egypt, will be saved from extermination. That mark of salvation is to be immersed in the blood of Christ and be purified – to be able to have the same mind of Christ to follow the repentant way. That is the sure path to deliverance from every inner enslavement and insertion into the community of joyful holiness.
Response: The glory of the Lord is above the heaven.
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