One of the most awesome and inspiring about priesthood, and at the same time the most humbling, is to be able to be used by God to grant forgiveness.
The sacrament of reconciliation always amazes me. It is amazing how good and gracious God is, how he does not deal with us as our sins deserve. Thank you, God, for, “if you O, Lord should mark our guilt, who would endure?”
The words of the Lord through the prophet Ezekiel are encouraging:
If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced. Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? says the Lord GOD. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live?
God does not want any of us to die. God wants us to live, and so he offers his forgiveness. It is an offer we can receive, ignore, or reject.
Since God forgives and desires that we be reconciled with him, we, his children are also called to ask forgiveness from our brothers and sisters whom we have wronged, to give forgiveness to those who have wronged us, and to seek reconciliation with them.
Forgiveness is a gift of life and liberty. When we ask for and receive God’s forgiveness, we are freed from sin, and restored to life. When we ask forgiveness from persons we have wronged, and give forgiveness to those who have wronged us, we end the cycle of resentment (which causes violence and “death”) and we open up the renewal of life-giving relationships. Somebody said, and I think he said it well: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and then you discover, the prisoner was you.”
This season of Lent, may we receive the liberating and life-giving grace of forgiveness. Amen.
Have a holy Lent.
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