For the ancient Israelites, the Babylonian captivity was a time of reckoning for their sins. In the first reading today from Baruch (1:15–22), we hear the prayer of the exiles, who confess their guilt before the LORD their God. They have disobeyed the Lord, not heeding his voice nor following his precepts; instead they each went off after the devices of his own wicked heart … and did evil in the sight of the Lord. And so they pray, Justice is with the Lord, our God.
We can learn a great deal from the prayer of the exiles, for as Paul tells us, all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). In this, we are no better than the exiles, for we also have been disobedient and only too ready to regard the Lord’s voice. But as it was for the Israelites, the recognition of our sin is salutary, because our contrition opens us up to recognize that the Lord is a forgiving God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and rich in mercy (Neh 9:17). We need only to look to the Cross to see how far the Lord’s mercy extends.
In our prayer today, let us ask the Lord to deepen our awareness of how greatly we need his forgiveness and pardon. However great our sins are, the Lord’s mercy is always greater.