Conversion
Our Lady of Medjugorje is leading us on a pilgrimage so as to have a deeper spiritual relationship with her Son. Many Christians seem to go around in circles in their spiritual life without making any progress. It seems that they receive Gods message, they are empowered and filled with joy at the message but then they fall back into their old ways, and they haven’t developed deeper in their spiritual lives.
This is the third reason why Our Lady brings us to the mountain of the Cross to learn from her Son about conversion about forgiveness and repentance so that we can grow spiritually deeper. To forgive you need two things. The first is willingness. The second is faith. How much faith? Faith the size of a very tiny mustard seed can move mountains, Jesus says, “Nothing will be impossible for you “ Matthew 17:20. Forgiveness may seem like that mountain; it may seem impossible. You may feel like you don’t want to go there again because of the pain. Please don’t stop. Jesus came to set the prisoners free.
Some people say, “I can say the words, but I feel like a hypocrite because forgiveness is not in my heart. In some cases forgiveness does seem humanly impossible. All we do is make an act of the will, speak the words (which break the power of the enemy) and trust that the Lord will do the rest. We decide to forgive even if we don’t feel like it.
Refusing to forgive is a sin for which we need to repent and ask God’s forgiveness. The words of Jesus are so powerful and urgent: “but if you do not forgive men their sins the father will not forgive your sins” Matthew 6:15. Rarely have I heard the sin of unforgiveness listed with a list of great awful sins. Yet the words of Jesus about unforgiveness are so strong that many would rather avoid them, denying their power and escaping from the responsibility of forgiving.
Unforgiveness is a cancer that eats away at your soul, destroying your peace of mind and also destroying the people you love most. We can blame the sister in law, brother in law or any other outlaw but the problem is within you.
One day Peter asked Jesus “Lord how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? “up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times but seventy - seven times” Matthew 18:21—22 When Jesus tells us to forgive he tells us to forgive until it is complete and we find rest. This is our daily call and often our daily struggle in our commitment to follow Jesus. As painful as it may seem uncovering hidden unforgiveness, bitterness and resentment in our heart is also the door to freedom.
THE SUPREME ACT OF LOVE
If we really want to understand forgiveness of sin and repentance we have
to understand God’s gift of love. Jesus says in Gethsemane, ‘My
Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup of suffering away
from me. Yet not what I want, but you want.” In great anguish he
prayed even more fervently, His sweat was like drops of blood falling
to the ground. Luke: 22:39
In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus went through a terrible agony. He probably didn’t mind suffering for those he loved or those who loved him or his Father. But did he really have to include those who rejected and betrayed God and his ways. That is, those who were, ungrateful, indifferent, and who mocked God. Why Father? is Jesus’ cry. ‘Because I love them,’ says the Father, Can we listen, can we hear what is being said. God who created everything loves you.
It was the final expression of love for His Father that He accepted. ‘Yet not what I want, but what you want.’ God the Father loves all his children, including the wicked, the sinner, the rejecters, the ungrateful etc. God the Father loves us and at times we were members of the groups that Jesus struggled with in the garden.
“Jesus always did what was pleasing to his Father” (John 8:29). How about us? Do we always do what is pleasing to God? — Jesus didn’t do things, because he ought to do things, because he was the Son of God, he did them because he loved.
REASONS WE DON’T FORGIVE
Many of us have difficulty forgiving. Almost everyone can call to mind
someone he or she needs to forgive deeply. Thinking forgiveness is impossible;
we may say “I tried” and then give up. It’s easy to
say that only God can forgive so until he forgives we sit and do nothing.
This is not right we need to examine our lives and identify some of the
reasons why we can’t forgive.
1. Lack of faith
Because of the depth of our pain we might consider it impossible to forgive.
The truth is, it is impossible for us. but God has provided a way. Jesus,
speaking about salvation, said to His disciple: “With man this is
impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God”
(Mark 10:27)
2. Lack of “want”
We do not want to forgive because of hurt. We are unwilling to walk through
the pain and get the other side of it, letting it go in forgiveness. Yet
in the depth of ones Soul one wanted to let go of ones anger and forgive.
Also we ‘enjoy” being victim. We ‘enjoy” feeling
resented.
3. A desire for revenge
We live in a society that wants revenge, not justice. We think we have
a right to retaliation. It is generally accepted that the victims of crime
want the death penalty for the accused or something worse. Many believers
do not know the power of forgiveness.
4. Fear
We often feel that if we forgive we give up our only defensive weapon.
And sometimes we are afraid to give up that weapon.
5. Pride
Sometimes pride, expressed as self righteousness or self justification
blocks our forgiveness. Deep down we think we have earned favor with God
and, therefore, others need to do something to deserve our forgiveness.
When self justification is at work in us, we become defensive and make
excuses.
RESPONSIBILITY
We must come to grips with the fact that we are responsible for how we’ve responded to the circumstances in our lives. If I lose my cool and abuse, fight, or curse someone, I am responsible for my actions, not the person who provoked me. Remember we’re inclined to see others according to the attitudes and expectations of our own heads. We can’t see God if we don’t have a pure head.
1. The first thing to do is to recognize
that you are responsible for the sinful response to difficult situations
that has caused a hardening of your heart.
2. The second thing you need to do is to repent of the judgments in your
heart and ask the Lord to break the patterns and structures that have
been built up in your mind — the patterns that expect judgment and
hurt.
Often it is the very person we blame for messing up our lives that God is using as an instrument to reveal our impure hearts and break our pride. The older brother saw his younger brother as the enemy, when really the enemy was within his own heart. Those who oppose us are often servants of God raised up to humble us. You can see this throughout the Old Testament, as Israel’s “enemies’ opposed them to turn them back to the Lord.
BINDING OR LOOSING
Our generation, like every other, is full of lost sons and daughters,
many of our parishioners are leaving the Church in rebellion, and many
Christians are falling to their knees, praying that the prodigals will
return.
I have often wondered: what would have
happened if the prodigal had met his older brother instead of his father
on the way back home? Would the older brother have spewed out his resentment
and bitterness? Would the younger brother have come under condemnation
and turned away, feeling helplessly unworthy? Would he have heard his
brother’s demand for justice and left again, utterly discouraged?
What will happen to the prodigals of this generation — our people
— if they return to the Church of Christ, the family of God and
don’t find the Spirit of Christ waiting to embrace them? Will we
as children of God be ready with forgiveness, generosity, and celebration?
Will we be willing to accommodate them? Will we really value their return?
Will we understand that the primary issue is not how they lived, what
they have done , how they will fit in , how much their return inconveniences
our routines, how much care they need But simply that they were dead and
now they are alive? Will we be willing to embrace them? Just as the onlookers
unbound Lazarus after Jesus had raised him from the dead will we be willing
to unbind those whom Jesus has spiritually raised from the dead?
We can learn how to release these people and not to hold them in bound
by their past.
This is another important quality of forgiveness, freeing someone, letting them go loose Matthew 18:15-18 this passage illustrates the difference in binding and loosing. In our world today — we speak about revenge — someone has to pay for this crime.
In the book of Deuteronomy 30 — God
is giving us a choice between, a blessing and a curse, between good and
evil, between life and death
For example Old Testament Genesis 45:15 story of Joseph whom was sold
to slavery, but he set his brothers free, he sets them loose, by forgiving
them. In doing so allowed God to intervene in the lives of his brothers,
who up to this time were closed to God.
In the New Testament Acts 7:60 Stephen forgives Saul and sets Saul loose so that God is free to work with him and use him. We are called to let those who hurt us, to set them loose so that God can take them, change them, and use them.
WOMAN WHO WASHED THE FEET OF JESUS
This is a tremendous story into how Jesus deals with sin, and forgiveness.
He loves the sinner but detests the sin, and he detests those who are
guilty of hypocrisy. Luke7:36-50
He now turns and says, your sins are forgiven you, thank you for your generosity — she smiled, bowed and left quietly and ran to wash and clothe, her life, her dignity, her love restored.
Repentance is much more than asking forgiveness for sins. It involves anything that turns us towards God and away from sin.
RECONCILIATION
“Come back to me with all your heart, the Lord calls “with
all your heart...
This Sacrament is standing naked before God, a spiritual and emotional
nakedness and sometimes a physical nakedness, which renders us able to
be completely honest, to hide nothing, to receive God’s love. It
is when we are naked that we are most vulnerable, but not until then can
we experience deep, profound love.