I know that I have preached before about how forgiveness and mercy can be very hard to understand and accept. We don’t always understand how it is that others can forgive us and show us mercy for what we have done. We may also struggle with how to forgive and show mercy to those who have hurt us in some way. Forgiveness can be quite difficult. I am certain that we can all think of times when we have been hurt by others and times when we have hurt others. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding. Perhaps it was an accident. Then again it may have been their fault, or it could be my fault. The point is, someone got hurt. Our Christian faith teaches us that when we are guilty of sinning against another, we are to apologize for what we did and try to make amends if possible. That same faith teaches us to forgive those have sinned against us. As I said, this is not always easy and it is easy to question in our minds how we are able to forgive and how others can forgive us.
When I was a child, I got in trouble for various things more often than I care to remember. I would get into fights with my younger sister and sometimes I would physically hurt her as a result of that fight. Sometimes I would break something in the house or cause a huge mess. There was also the occasional report card and test I would bring home from school that showed that I was struggling in a certain subject. All of these things usually meant some sort of punishment or some other negative reaction from my parents. Now, this usually meant that I was given a serious lecture about what I did. I might be sent to my room for a time, or have certain privileges taken away, like time on the computer or TV. Sometimes the punishment was simply having to get along with my sister (that could be the hardest). My parents have always been firm, but I would never call them harsh disciplinarians.
That being said, my imagination would often run rampant as I imagined how my parents would react to things I had done and the severe punishments that were certain to follow. I’m sure at some point I pictured being kept in my room for days at a time and having to do forced labor around the house. I thought I would have to beg to be shown the love of my parents once more. Deep down I knew my parents would never stop loving me, but I would still wonder at times if I could still be forgiven for some of the things I had done.
Of course, the actual punishment never came close to what my runaway imagination had concocted. There was usually a talk from one or both parents about what I did wrong and what I should have done. If I was punished, it was typically less than I expected. And my parents were always there to forgive me and love me after it was all over. In fact, I think many times I felt so guilty that it took me longer to forgive myself than my parents to forgive me.
I hope that all of you have had a similar experience of being forgiven. If not, I pray that you will. We might not always understand how it happens, and we might not always feel like we deserve it, but it is important that we experience forgiveness in some form or another.
The overall theme of the readings for today is about the mercy of God. God’s mercy is all about His never ending love and forgiveness that He has for all His children. When you read through the Old Testament, it can be tempting to assume that God is more vengeful than merciful and that He takes pleasure in seeing the wicked punished. Whenever we are tempted to think that, all we have to do is look at a passage like our First Reading from Second Chronicles to bring us back to reality. The reading starts out by talking about the people of the land of Judah and how they chose to turn away from God. We are told that again and again God sent His messengers (His prophets) to try to bring their hearts back to God. “For He had compassion on His people and His dwelling place” the speaker says. God is compassionate and gives many chances for the people to repent before He punishes. The people do not listen though and mock those messengers and continue to go against God’s commandments. As punishment, God allows the Babylonians to destroy the temple and take the people into exile.
Several decades later, a new king comes to power, Cyrus of Persia. Cyrus is famous in history for allowing the Jewish exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem. He even gave the people money to rebuild the Temple. The writer of Second Chronicles makes sure to explain that the reason King Cyrus is so generous, is because of God mercy. The people sinned, God punished them, they served their time, and now God has forgiven them and blessed them. God is merciful.
Of course, the New Testament is full of examples of God’s mercy as well. In our Second Reading, St. Paul tells the Ephesians (and all of us) that God is rich in mercy and that even though we were dead because of our sins, He raised us up with Jesus Christ and has given us a place in Heaven. How was God able to give us so great a mercy when through the choice of our own sins, we had already condemned ourselves to eternal death? How is God able to continue to give us that mercy? The answer is nothing short of the Cross.
The Gospel Reading today from John gives us that famous dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life”. Again, we have this great summation of God’s infinite mercy. This is possible, and only possible, through the Cross of Christ. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.”
Today is Laetare Sunday. Laetare means joy. Even in this penitential season of Lent, we are able to find joy, because God has given us mercy through the Cross of His Son. Let us not fear punishment or death, but trust in that mercy.
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