23 February 2021
Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
“This is how you are to pray: Father, … forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” (Matthew 6:9,12)
Nothing quite brings home our dependence of God as entering into the desert of forgiving someone else. Doing the spiritual works of mercy (especially forgiving injuries) often require far more of our spirit than the corporal works of mercy require of our body. Injuries, offenses, the sins of others strike at the very spiritual stuff in us that we would use to offer the spiritual labor of forgiving. It can feel as if the hungry one whom we are to feed is precisely the one who just blew up the pantry: the one in need of our mercy is the one whose actions have hit us in the heart where our mercy resides.
And yet, Our Lord, when He teaches us how to pray, includes only one line that we are to address to God about what we are doing, the action that may be the hardest: forgiving. What is to restore our supply so that we can offer true, sincere, humble forgiveness to those in our life who need it from us? Remembering that the Lord promised (Ps 91:15-16) to answer those who call upon Him, we can contemplate Our Father in heaven answering all our petitions in Jesus’ prayer: keeping the divine Name holy in our hearts, reigning in our lives, doing His Will, nourishing us each day (in body and in soul, so fully in the Eucharist), forgiving us (so certainly by the words of absolution), leading us safely past all temptation, making us safe from every evil, and so embracing us with Fatherly care in every moment. When we lean into the arms of such a God, and we see that God so meeting our needs, how could we do anything but join such Divine Mercy in forgiving and restoring relationships with those around us? When our dry land, so dependent on heaven’s rain, has the outpouring of that Divine Word soaking into our depths, (Is 55:10-11) how could we do anything but bear the fruit which Jesus seeks?
What if I still find forgiveness difficult? Do you feel too poor in mercy? Call out to the Lord, for He hears the poor. (Ps 34:7) Do you feel as if forgiveness would be unjust? Call out to the Lord, who has ears for the cry of the just and preserves them. (Ps 34:16) Does your heart still feel too broken to forgive? “The Lord is close to the broken hearted, saves those whose spirit is crushed.” (Ps 34:19) Let us offer forgiveness to one another as an act of faith and trust in such a just and merciful Lord.