If you’re like me, you probably forget a lot of things. It seems like the more important something is, the easier it is to forget. Sadly, however, it seems to be nearly impossible to forget past mistakes that we’ve made: bad decisions, poor choices of words, errors of judgment and so on. Sometimes we might forget some of our past, but remember very clearly a grievance or grudge against someone else for a mistake which they committed.
One theme we see in today’s readings is a call by both the prophet Isaiah and St. Paul to forget the past. Both encourage us to look to the future, seeing that God is “doing something new” and “straining forward to what lies ahead.” St. Paul takes this further, telling us, “I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”
What is this goal, this prize of which St. Paul speaks? He is speaking of the righteousness of Christ, through which we receive the mercy of God. We see this when St. Paul tells us that he does “not [have] any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God”.
In speaking of the “righteousness from God”, St. Paul is saying that what has brought him into right relationship with God is not following the Mosaic Law of the Jewish Covenant, but entering into and following his faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. In effect, St. Paul is describing for us the difference between how the scribes and Pharisees approached the woman caught in adultery, and how Jesus approached her.
When the woman was brought before Our Lord, the scribes and Pharisees wanted to put Him in an impossible trap. In response to their statement “Moses commanded us to stone such women,” they wanted to force Him to break either the Law given by God the Father to Moses, or the Roman secular law that reserved the death penalty to the Roman authorities. Either way they could denounce Him as either a false prophet and Roman sympathizer or as a revolutionary who sought to overturn Roman rule in the Jewish Promised Land.
Our Lord obviously saw through the test, and showed them a better way. Instead of condemning the woman, as the scribes and Pharisees wished, He offered her mercy and forgiveness of sins. By doing so, He showed us that the path to salvation no longer comes through strict observance of the Law, but through the mercy of God.
It’s important to remember that God’s mercy is not something we need only once in our lives, but needs to be sought and received constantly throughout our lives. St. Paul speaks of the resurrection from the dead, which we receive through God’s mercy and love, saying, “It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it.” If St. Paul, who had been called by Christ personally after Our Lord’s resurrection was still in need of God’s mercy, how much more are we in need of that mercy.
The problem with human nature is that we still have the desire to test God’s mercy. Now, it’s not like we’re trying to trap Jesus as the scribes and Pharisees did. No, we test Him when we put off seeking His mercy, as St. Augustine did in his famous quote, “Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.” We test Him when we allow ourselves to sink deeper and deeper into sin without seeking His mercy.
Instead of avoiding God’s mercy, we need to seek it and desire it with all our hearts. One theme that kept coming up throughout the conference this weekend in Billings was the power of the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Through this prayer, which can be prayed very quickly and is easily memorized, God’s mercy floods the world, filling the souls of those who pray it and those for whom the Chaplet has been prayed. It is a simple prayer, but one of the most powerful for asking God to “have mercy on us and on the whole world.” I would encourage all of you to learn this prayer, if you don’t know it already, and to pray it daily, especially with your families.
As this Lenten season quickly approaches its conclusion and we prepare for Holy Week, may we seek God’s mercy in abundance instead of testing Him as the scribes and Pharisees did.
Hello Father
Thanks for posting the homily………..liked your reflections