+ Today we begin once again the green season of the year which the Church gives us "to feast on the banquet" that God provides for his people, his children, the flock he loves to shepherd. Just as it is time now to break out the picnic baskets and barbeque grills, let us not forget this veritable Banquet of the Word of Life, and the spiritual Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus that he provides here each Sunday, so that we can appreciate the Eucharist that we receive at the table, and so that we can be the living Eucharist for others whom God places in our lives so that we can encourage, nurture and help along the way.
During these next several months, I would like to once again take up my New Year's Resolution to keep my homilies a bit shorter and more to the point (I may have stayed a bit now and then) – and so: today's point is this: the Lord has provided a very specific way to forgive the wrong that we do!
King David, and the Penitent Woman were each different in their motivation to sin, but they both had one thing in common – that we can also have in common with them - they both turned to the Lord / and were forgiven / because they asked to be. One came to the intellectual and heartfelt
realization that he had sinned and announced this fact to a representative of the Lord (this being David), and Nathan told David that the Lord for his part had forgiven his sin;
the other literally turned to the Lord Jesus, approached him, and out of great love simply washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair (this being the Penitent Woman). He knew who and what sort of woman she was and it was her faith and love that was the cause of the forgiveness of her sins.
If we put both of these rather beautiful and dramatic penitential stories together we come to a model for ourselves.
We can see that the story of King David confessing to Nathan prefigures the great Sacrament of Penance, Reconciliation and Peace. The Church tells us we must confess serious sin to the priest – to God's specially appointed representative – and we shall be surely forgiven. This Sacrament is not optional!
But before this happens, we can also turn privately to the Lord like the Penitent Woman did and pour out our sorrow, our love and hopefully our tears on his feet. And we will hear him tells us two things: everything will be alright: your faith is working and now useful to you, so go to the priest and confess your sins. This is implied, by the later institution of the Sacrament of Penance. Should the woman sin again, she could avail herself of the Lord's forgiveness directly in that wonderful sacramental encounter.
That's it for today! A man and a woman sinned. A man and a woman were forgiven. Men, women and children like us, in fact us, are invited to partake of the "Sumptuous Banquet of Forgiveness" that is offered in all our parish churches weekly on Saturday afternoon! Penance is the great unforgotten sacrament of our day! And it is a shame, because it is absolutely essential for everlasting life, for anyone who sins - in an even remotely serious way - after baptism – to confess his sins to a priest!
Lord, forgive the wrong we have done!
No comments:
Post a Comment