Word to the Wise
Saturday, February 23, 2008 - Saturday in the Second Week of Lent
[Micah 7:14-15, 18-20 and Luke 15:1-3, 11-32]Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance; who does not persist in anger forever, but delights rather in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, trading underfoot our guilt? You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins......
One of the expressions I often hear in confession comes when a person has mentioned all the particular items: "and for all the sins of my past life...." In some ways we have trouble letting go of those and can't quite believe that God's pardon has long since taken care of them. Yet they continue to haunt us. Micah the prophet assures us of "the wideness of God's mercy," (as the old hymn puts it) and the parable of the Prodigal Son, in today's gospel scripture, assures us that God will come running to greet us, whether we made a bad decision or (as in the case of the older brother) we are resentful of God's mercy toward someone we think should be punished and not greeted with love! Perhaps some of the explanation lies in our own shame and inability to forgive ourselves. We get into thinking: "Oh, it's easy for God to forgive me. But I can't forgive me!" Or we think absurdly: "If only God knew what I'm REALLY like!" We just can't give God those mistakes and sins to cast into the depths of the sea, as Micah says! Jesus tells us that not only must we love God with all our heart, mind and strength, but we must love our neighbor AS OURSELVES. A wise Dominican once said to me, "Jesus commands us to love our enemy. What if our enemy is ourself?" It can be a difficult challenge, but we can never be truly free to love God and neighbor as long as we late ourselves. AMEN
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