DAILY HOMILIES #mercy

When we go for confession, God so forgives our sins and washes us that we can confidently say we become new creatures. God does not remember our sins because the moment we offload them at the confessional, our old self dies and we leave as newborn babies. Just as you cannot accuse a newborn baby of sin, God no longer accuses us of the sins that we have dropped at the confessional. Never be too shy to go to confession; it is not the priest who forgives us but Jesus Christ himself who gave the priest the power to retain or absolve sins in His name.

Each of us has a past. You may see yourself as a desert, God is saying, I will make rivers flow from you. You may have gone deep in sin, yet God is saying: “my child, you can still be a Saint.” The God who called a murderer and changed his name from Saul to Paul is the same God we serve.

God believes that people can change so He keeps giving second chances again and again. God knows that in punishing the sinner, the saint suffers alongside. God allows the sinner to be but the day of harvest must surely come.

There is an extent to which our worship of God becomes reduced to the mere observation of rules. This was the problem of the Pharisees.

Jesus had the chance to totally squash to pieces all those who treated him badly yet, He did not even wait to rise from the dead before He began his campaign of forgiveness. Right on the cross, Jesus said: “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). As if this was not enough, eight days after Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared to his disciples saying: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

It doesn’t matter what your past has been, Jesus wants to work through you and in you. Jesus wants you to be His apostle, to spread the news of His Resurrection to the ends of the earth. Come of the darkness, embrace the light, save yourself from this wicked generation.

Knowing the weaknesses of others should not make us puffed with pride, it should make us think of ways to help them up. This requires humility; humility to know that your level in life came not by your power but by the grace of God and others who helped you in the past.

It surely makes a lot of sense to revenge on the wrongs done to us by others, to teach them a lesson or to show them that we are not to be toiled with. This is often the message in all our action movies – it is the wisdom of the world. However, as Christians, Jesus expects us to operate with a higher level of wisdom; one that sounds foolish to the world, a wisdom that forgives, that turns the other cheek after receiving a slap, a wisdom that says: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

God is inviting us today to rise from where we have fallen, to pick up our Cross again, to say with the Prodigal Son, “I will arise and go to my Father.”

Children must resemble their father, their DNA must match. If we are not merciful, we cannot claim to be children of God and we really have no business in heaven. Your best possible life can only happen when you are merciful. Your heart is too precious to be used as a storage device for hurt, bitterness and vengeance.