As the Year for Priests looms, a respected priest from India discusses the Eucharist. This week – Christian living: A response of forgiving love.
By Fr Erasto Fernandez SSS
We have seen how God’s forgiveness is always a gift to us. Should we then take sin lightly because God is so good and ‘lenient’? If we do, it simply means that we have not really understood God’s love. No one who experiences God’s love deeply can consciously offend him again.
Yet so often we choose self in preference to God’s will and thus break or weaken our relationship with him. In spite of this, instead of punishing us, he still lovingly welcomes us back. “Come back to Me, with all your heart…”
So not only at Eucharist but also throughout our lives, we thank and praise God for his immense forgiving love given so freely and readily each time we fail. At the Penitential Rite, therefore, we should not abjectly crave for mercy as we pray/sing the ‘Lord, have mercy.’ Such a grovelling approach is actually an insult to God’s gracious generosity in always taking the initiative to forgive us. The more accurate way of rendering ‘Lord, have mercy’ would be: ‘Lord, you are so generous, loving and merciful; you welcome us back with tender compassion; you are the source of all mercy.’ Once we adopt this approach to God’s mercy, we need to reflect these positive sentiments in our stance, our tone of voice and our general bearing all through Eucharist, and all through life as well.
God’s love is a transforming love. Now the test of our having gratefully and efficaciously received his forgiving love and allowed it to transform us is that we can reach out to others with an equally generous forgiveness. Another sign that we have received God’s forgiveness effectively is that we do not return to the same old sinful life-style. God’s forgiveness transforms us into a new creation.
In the ‘Lord’s prayer’ we say: ‘Forgive us our sins as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.’ Luke stresses the point that in the very act of forgiving others we ourselves are forgiven. The parable of the ‘Unforgiving Servant’ reminds us that God’s gracious forgiveness cannot be kept for oneself alone: it has to be passed on. Further, the forgiveness we share with others is God’s own forgiveness, not ours. In practice, this means that if we deliberately refuse to forgive others, we close the doors of our hearts to God’s forgiveness for ourselves too.
Hence during the Penitential Rite, we focus not only on God and his unbelievable graciousness, but also look outwards towards others, to see whether we have really forgiven all those who have hurt us.
After God has forgiven us so completely, we cannot afford to keep even an unconscious grudge against any of our brothers and sisters. We recall the words of Jesus: “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you …” (Mt. 5:23-24).
At our next Eucharist we could consciously pause and ask ourselves: ‘Is there anyone in my life that I need to forgive now even as I praise God for his gift of forgiveness to me?’ Am I in the habit of keeping score of the wrongs others have done me? Do I realise that if I still feel hurt, it is because I am not yet fully secure in the Father’s love for me? Since the Father holds me tenderly in his arms, no one can really hurt or harm me. “For those who love God, everything works for their good … who will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. 8:30-39).
God has already forgiven us from all eternity, and especially through the death of his Son Jesus.
All of God’s actions are beyond time and space.
The whole thrust of the message of the prophets is precisely that God takes the initiative in forgiving his people and bringing them back – even when they don’t really deserve it.
But because God has forgiven me that does not mean that I am forgiven until I humbly accept that gift of forgiveness which implies at least two things: that I don’t repeat the same sin consciously and that I be ready to share God’s free gift of forgiveness with others who hurt me without waiting for them to ask for it.