Say the Words!

 

Third Sunday of Easter

Cycle B

 

Forgiveness

 

Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away."

 

We hear the theme of repentance for the forgiveness of sins again in today’s readings. Jesus began his public ministry with the message, repent and believe in the gospel. That message was central to his entire teaching, but it was only after the disciples had witnessed his suffering, death, and resurrection that they could finally understand the how and the why. Jesus tied it all together when he appeared to them that Easter night.

 

 "Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things."

 

Forgiveness of sins is not only central to Jesus’ teaching but is at the core of all the scriptures. Forgiveness is talked about over 70 times in scripture, 40 times in the New Testament alone. Humanity’s fallen nature means we are in need of repentance and forgiveness. The bible is one long story of our falling again and again and being lifted up again and again. Jesus spoke of and offered forgiveness so many times, even from the cross to those who were killing him. To the very end he offered them hope and a relationship with him. He offered them salvation by forgiving their sin. Jesus knows how broken we are. Jesus knows how desperately we want and need to be forgiven, and he offers it to us constantly through His church today.

 

Forgiveness is central not only to our faith but to our very well-being. We all live in relationships with others, in fact, we cannot even be saved outside of relationships with others, yet we always seem to hurt one another and break those relationships. That is the definition of sin. There are many, many people today who do not have a sense of sin, what it is or if it even exists, but everyone can understand broken relationships because they are so painful. One of the great tragedies of humanity is that so many relationships are never healed because so many times forgiveness is never asked for or given or received when they are broken. And all our relationships will be hurt or broken from time to time. The only way to restore those relationships is through forgiveness, asked for and given, freely, honestly and truly.

 

If there was no forgiveness for our sins, there would be no hope for us. Not just hope for eternal life but hope for happiness here in this life. Without forgiveness we will spiral down into self-loathing, or we will become so scarred and jaded that we give up and not care. And that is the most frightening thing of all. Forgiveness is true love, and the opposite of love is apathy.

 

We all want to be forgiven; we all need to be forgiven. We all need to forgive.

 

Have you ever asked someone to forgive you and they refused? Or they sloughed it off and didn’t take it seriously? Or they said they accepted your apology, but you felt deep down they didn’t mean it, and the relationship remained strained? How did that make you feel? Hurt, angry, worthless? What did that do to your self-image? What did you think about the other person? Do you still feel that hurt today?

 

I give advice to young parents when I prepare them to have their children baptized to never hesitate to forgive their children when they do something wrong. When a child says they’re sorry to you, if you even flinch or pause or give some sort of condition before accepting their apology you plant the seed of doubt in them that you really don’t forgive them. And if you do that to them often enough, they will eventually stop saying they’re sorry because they don’t believe you will forgive them. It’s a defense mechanism to avoid the pain of that rejection because that is what withholding forgiveness really is, rejection. A deep rejection when we are the most vulnerable. Those feelings of rejection and avoidance of situations where it could occur again can carry over to adulthood and affect all our relationships.

 

When Fr. Bob would teach our catechumens about the sacrament of reconciliation, he would tell them that in the confessional it was like he is holding the penitent’s heart in his hands, and it is an awesome responsibility for him to cherish and honor that heart and not destroy it. It takes great courage to ask for forgiveness, and when we do, we are extremely vulnerable. If we are rejected at that moment, it can affect us for a lifetime. When someone comes to us for forgiveness we have great power over them, and it is at that moment we can truly offer God’s mercy along with our own.

 

The beautiful thing about our God is that no matter what we have done, if we come to him with a sincere repentant heart desiring forgiveness, he will never reject us. Even if we come to him at the very last moment of our lives, all will be wiped clean. There’s a flip side to this forgiveness thing, however. Jesus told us that we will be forgiven to the extent that we forgive. He actually said that if we don’t forgive one another, we will not be forgiven, and his forgiveness is predicated on our truly repenting of our sins. That means we sincerely intend to avoid those sins, we feel true remorse not just because of the potential consequences of our sins, but because we know that they hurt our relationship with God, who deserves all our love.

 

We all want to be forgiven; we all need to be forgiven. We all need to forgive.

 

Forgive each other constantly, even if you are forgiving the same thing over and over again. Ask for forgiveness constantly, even if you are asking it for the same thing over and over again. Never cease to persevere in doing what is right, brothers and sisters.

 

The three most important words in a relationship are not “I love you”, but “I forgive you”. The next three most important words are “I am sorry”. Say the words. We need to hear the words. We need to say the words. We need to hear ourselves say the words. Words matter. Let there be no question about your intent or what you are asking for and offering. A wise monk once told me that the most loving thing you can do for someone is to say you’re sorry to them, because you are then giving them the chance to love you in return. Give them that chance.

 

Say “I am sorry, please forgive me” or better yet, “I am sorry for doing x, please forgive me.” “I apologize” can mean anything, as does “I regret my actions”. They’re halfhearted and meaningless. Saying you’re sorry shows emotional understanding of what you are offering. And in return don’t say “it’s ok”, because it’s not ok. There is hurt involved here. Say the words “I forgive you”. That leaves no question in the mind of the asker and can open the door to true reconciliation.

 

Say the words to God, too. Go to confession often, even if you seem to be confessing the same sins over and over again. I once told a priest that it felt worthless to keep confessing the same things over again, and he said, “What, you want new sins?” Jesus knows your failings better than you do, he wants to hear you ask for forgiveness, and he wants so desperately to have you hear his words of reconciliation.

 

It’s hard. I know. It’s really hard to put yourself out there risking rejection. Especially if the hurt was a serious one, or when you feel like such a failure to keep coming back and ask for forgiveness for the same thing over and over again. And it’s hard to keep forgiving the same things because you don’t see the situation ever improving. It’s like ripping off the scab every time. But we must. Jesus told Peter to forgive a sin seventy times seven. Because if you don’t it only winds up hurting you instead.

 

Jesus told his disciples that Easter night, “Who’s sins you forgive are forgiven, and who’s sins you hold bound are held bound.” You’ve gotta let it go.  If you forgive each other’s sins, then healing can occur and relationships can occur. If you hold them bound; if you keep them tied up inside of you and let them fester into bitterness, healing can never occur, and relationships will be permanently destroyed.

 

The first thing Jesus says to his disciples is “Peace be with you”. They needed to hear the words from his mouth because they were not at peace. He actually said it twice. How do you think they felt after betraying him, denying him and running away from him when he needed them most? But instead of berating them he showed them compassion. He knew how they were feeling, how ashamed they were. He knew they were in danger of tearing apart their fragile fellowship, destroying the church before it even began, and so he offered them two things: his peace and his forgiveness. “If I can forgive you,” Jesus was telling them, “Then you must forgive one another and move on”.

That forgiveness allowed the apostles to go out and proclaim the good news to the entire world. That forgiveness is what attracts people to the faith. That forgiveness is why you and I are Christians today. That forgiveness is the hope that we continue to offer humanity by practicing it in our everyday lives.

 

 

 

 

 

Tattoo

 

6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle B

Lv 13:1-2,44-46

1 Cor 10:31-11:1

Mk 1:40-45

 

Imagine for a moment that you wake up tomorrow, lift yourself out of bed, and trudge into the bathroom to brush your teeth. You peer bleary eyed into the mirror and see something truly horrible. Overnight, in bold colors, the name of a sin you had committed the day before had appeared written on your forearm, sort of like a tattoo. No amount of soap and water or hard scrubbing would remove it. Horrified, you put on a long-sleeved shirt to cover it up.

 

But that’s not the worst of it. Every day afterwards, when you wake up another sin you had committed appears tattooed somewhere else on your body. The little sins are little tattoos and the big ones are big tattoos. Some are in inconspicuous places that are easy to cover up, but one morning after a particularly fun night out, a large red tattoo appears right in the middle of your forehead. And this sin is a doozy, a particularly embarrassing one. There’s no easy way to cover that one up, so you decide to stay inside until you can figure out just what’s going on.

 

Each day your sins are always before you. You can’t escape them and the guilt you feel. They are constant reminders of your failures. You are desperate to wash them away, to remove them from your sight. And finally, you have to leave the house. You have to go out into the world, and now everyone can see your sin. It has physically altered you and you no longer look like other people. Just like Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter, you are shunned and mocked by everyone you meet. You will do anything, anything at all, to be rid of them. You vow that if they are removed you will never sin again. Ever.

 

What if your sin was as visible to you as leprosy? What if your sin was always before you? How would it make you feel? To what lengths would you go to remove it?

 

What if your sin was as visible to the world as leprosy? What if everyone you meet knows exactly how you have sinned? How would they treat you? How would it make you feel? To what lengths would you go to remove it?

 

We hear today Moses’ prescription for the treatment of lepers, and it seems pretty harsh. Lepers were to be treated as outcasts from the community. Even the suspicion of leprosy meant exile. There were two reasons for this; first, it was a public health issue. Leprosy is extremely contagious, so it made sense to isolate those suffering from it. However, it was also a question of morality. The ancient Jews believed that the sick suffered because they were sinners. If you pleased the Lord He would bless you with good health, wealth, long life and children. If you were poor, sickly or barren it was because you or your parents had done something sinful, and God was punishing you for it.

 

Lepers had to actually take the posture of the penitent - rending their clothes and uncovering their heads – not because they were sick but because their sin had made them impure. They were unclean and to have contact with them not only exposed you to their illness but to their sin. Sin was just as contagious as leprosy, so sinners were shunned and ostracized. To touch the unclean made you unclean. To consort with sinners made you a sinner. People accused Jesus of being a sinner all the time because of who he associated with.

 

And people would be very cruel to the unclean. They would drive them away, throw rocks at them, and cut them off from everything they loved. They would be publicly humiliated and shunned. They would lose everything and live in desperation.

 

The only way the leper, the sinner, could return to the community was to prove that the ailment no longer existed. If the outward signs of the illness were gone, that indicated that the inner sinfulness was gone, too. That is why the healed had to show themselves to the priests. The priests were the representatives of the faith community. They had to verify that the person had turned from their sin and could then be reconciled to the community.

 

Jesus came into contact with lepers because he went to where they were. He went to the peripheries, where he wasn’t supposed to go, knowing who and what he would encounter there. He wouldn’t have easily come into contact with lepers in the towns and cities, or even on the roads, because Jewish law forced lepers to live away from those places. And we know that Jesus could easily heal people with just a word, even from a distance, yet he chose to touch this man. By doing so in the presence of his disciples he was making himself ritually unclean. They must have been scandalized. Here he was again going against the law. But he was showing the disciples what mercy was really like, and he proved to them that the sick had value. He did not shun them. And he was showing them his authority and power, even over the law.

The leper didn’t come to Jesus because he believed he was the son of God. He had just heard that Jesus was a powerful healer, and believed that he could be healed himself. He would do anything, try anything, to remove the stain and the pain of his disease. He also believed, like everyone else did, that he was suffering physically because he was a sinner. He fell at Jesus’ feet and groveled in the dirt. And he said basically, “You are the only one who can make me clean. You are the only one I trust not to judge me. You are the last person I can turn to and I desperately hope you won’t turn me away. Please make me clean. Please remove these outward signs of my sinfulness. Please see me as a person of value. Please don’t join in the shaming but accept me. Forgive me.”

 

And Jesus did. What else could he do? He didn’t see before him a sinner being punished for what he had done. He saw him as a complete human being. He returned his dignity to him. He forgave him his sins. And he made him feel that he was free from the effects of his sin. It’s as if all had been wiped clean.

 

We are the same. All we need to be cleansed of our sin is to turn to Jesus and believe that we can be forgiven. For some that is really hard to believe. Sin makes us feel dirty, cut off from those we love, unworthy. We have to believe that there is hope. I think that today most people do not have a sense of sin. They have moved away from God and so have lost hope in forgiveness. They feel those feelings of being unworthy but do not know the reason why. They cannot name their sin and therefore cannot hope to be cured of it. It would almost be better if we could see our sins tatooed right between our eyes.

 

We can also turn to Jesus and be healed. It was no coincidence that Jesus tells the man to show himself to the priest. He calls us to do the same so the priest can declare us clean.

 

The man could not contain his joy at being healed. He went and told everyone he could about what had happened to him. Whereas before he cowered before others, now he stood tall. What if we felt that same way when our sins are forgiven? What if we left the confessional and went out and proclaimed to everyone that our sins have been forgiven and we are now clean. What if instead of a big red tattoo on our foreheads there was a shining light surrounding our faces, a glow of deep joy that everyone could see? How would that make you feel? How would that affect the people around you?

 

The season of Lent is upon us. What better time to be healed? Why not take a good, close look at yourself in the mirror every evening and take stock of how you had lived that day? See all the blemishes for what they are, even the ones that are hard to find? Why not sit down with those closest to you, the ones who can also see your sins as if they were tattooed on your forehead, and ask for forgiveness and reconciliation? Why not go see Jesus, throw yourself down before him in the confessional and say, “If you will to do so, you can make me clean”.

 

I assure you, he wills to do so. And I guarantee you, your joy will be great and your joy will be contagious.

Time is Running Out

 

3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle B

 

I tell you, brothers and sisters, time is running out.

 

For us the world as it is is literally passing away. All those things we think are important – our relationships, our emotions, our physical being – are still there but have changed as our focus has changed. Our priorities are no longer the things of this world but the divine. The kingdom of God is at hand. We still live in this world but we are not of it. As St. Paul says, “in him we live and move and have our being”. The coming of the Lord is fulfilled in our time. We long for His second coming but live each day with the Holy Spirit active in our everyday lives. That was the message of advent we just experienced, and that is the reality we must continue to be aware of and live all throughout our lives.

 

These are the first words Jesus speaks in the gospels. The part about loving your neighbor comes later on. He had to set the stage first. He had to prepare the people’s hearts to receive his message. You must repent in order to believe. The first step towards loving God and loving our neighbor is to first reform our lives. We need to remove the clutter and garbage that hides our true calling in order to see our path clearly. Sometimes that call comes from a prophet like Jonah pointing out our wrongdoings and calling us to change. Other times it is the Lord himself entering into our everyday lives with the call to leave everything behind and follow him, even though we do not know him fully yet and really have no idea what our lives will be like when we do so. Peter, James, and John experienced this call very clearly and literally that day. Their response to Jesus’ preaching of repentance and reform was to set everything aside to follow him.

 

They trusted him. The call of Jesus is the call to trust.

 

We spend so much time and energy trying to be happy. We cram our lives with so many things, activities, and indulgences thinking they will make us happy. We think we can create our own happiness, but the happiness of the world is empty and fleeting. Jesus’ way is so much simpler, so much easier. All we have to do is get out of his way. All we have to do is stop thinking we can make ourselves happy and just change the way we see these things.

 

St. Paul is not saying we are not to marry, own things, or live in the world, but that once we understand just how radical the coming of God as man is we will view those things differently. We will have changed and so the way we live our daily lives will also change. We will no longer be slaves to the things of the world but will see and use them to build the kingdom of God.

 

We will not cease to be married but will enter into a deeper, holier relationship with our spouse. We will not stop buying things but rather will not be slaves to materialism and commercialism. We will use the physical things of the world to help meet the needs of others. Our sorrows will be tempered by the hope of eternal life when we link our suffering to that of Jesus. Our rejoicing will be so much greater when we truly understand what the Lord has in store for those who love him.

 

Our lives are not just something that happens to us. We have control over our lives to a great extent and we can always choose to be better. We can always change. Repentance is an active thing and it begins with a call. Repentance always involves a deep self-reflection followed by a change of heart and life. True repentance is a commitment each and every day to seek the will of God for us and to live our lives accordingly. That self-reflection can be painful and sorrowful as we see our shortcomings. But there is also the promise of something wonderful that will follow when we repent.

 

Jesus says to repent and believe in the gospel, and that good news is that God has sent his only son into the world for our redemption. Repentance leads to eternal life, the ultimate reward. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Even the darkness of lent leads to the glory of Easter. The Lord’s passion and death led to his glorious resurrection. And so it will be for us.

 

The first words Jesus speaks in the gospels are to repent and believe. Some of the last words he speaks in the gospels are to go and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them everything he had commanded them. The call to repentance did not end with Jesus. Just as with Jonah, it is our prophetic mission to call the world to repent and acknowledge the kingdom of God that is at hand. The old world is passing away and the new world is being created…with our help and participation.

 

You know, Jonah didn’t want to be a prophet. He ran away when God first called him to go to Ninevah. Remember that whale? And he was surprised when they repented, he even got really angry that God had shown mercy on them. He actually got angry when his mission was successful! I think every prophet is a reluctant one. It is really hard to have the courage to call others to repentance. Oftentimes it’s easier for us to change than to call others to change. There is always the possibility of rejection, of ridicule, or even violence. The old world does not want to pass away easily or willingly. But once we ourselves have repented we must call others to repentance and belief. We must be willing participants in ushering in a new heaven and a new earth. Just like Peter, James and John, we are call to repent, believe and fish.

 

But I tell you, brothers and sisters, time is running out. For all of us time is literally running out. We have an infinite number of chances to repent and reform our lives to live according to the gospel…until we don’t.