Saturday of the Second Week of Lent - March 22

Micah 7:14-15, 18-20 Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Note: reflection is reprinted from the 2020 edition of this annual resource.

Today’s readings all speak to God’s limitless capacity for love and forgiveness. When I was young I struggled with this Gospel. The “good” son is treated unfairly while the “bad” one is lavished with things he doesn’t deserve. As I’ve gotten older and experienced the unconditional love of parenthood, as well as the trials of life we all undergo, my view has changed. We can’t ever know the landscape others inhabit, let alone what they “deserve.” While my younger, uncompromising self demanded “justice,” my older, hopefully wiser self sees this broken world and is grateful for God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Who among us really lives up to what we are called to do—welcome the immigrant, care for the downtrodden, treat everyone with kindness and respect? I know I don’t. Wouldn’t most of us be grateful to receive mercy rather than to get what we truly deserve?

Each Sunday we say “Lord, I am not worthy” - not, I think, to make us feel badly about ourselves, but rather, to make us humbly aware that we are blessed and forgiven by God not because we “deserve” it, but as a loving gift—and in spite of all our flaws and inadequacies. And just as we are forgiven, so too must we forgive.

Years ago I visited a township in South Africa and was overwhelmed by the warmth and generosity of its inhabitants. I asked the guide how his community could be so welcoming after suffering the humiliations and deprivations of apartheid. He pointed to a new bakery that had been donated by the family of a US student, Amy Biel, who was murdered by a mob while helping to organize the first election after apartheid.

That bakery now feeds the township and employs several of the perpetrators who attached their daughter. The guide said, “with that as an example, how can we do any less?” God also sacrificed a child on our behalf and forgave us. How, indeed, can we do any less than to forgive those who have injured us?

Q: Who do I need to forgive today? From whom do I need to ask forgiveness?

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