HOMILY WEEK 02 06 – Year I
Living in the Freedom of the Children of God
(Heb 9:2-14; Ps 47; Mk 3:20-21)
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Amanda wrapped up an emotional talk at a Search weekend for youth by turning to towards me sitting close by, tears in her eyes, and asked a plaintive question, “I wonder if God will ever forgive me?”
The readings today invite us to trust totally in our God’s love, revealed by Jesus to be forgiveness and healing.
It seems to me that many people, for some reason, struggle to believe they are truly forgiven, and then to forgive themselves. One eighty-year-old man shared with me his feelings of guilt about a sexual sin he had committed forty years earlier. I mentioned to him the passages in the bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New, that God not only will put our sins as far from us as the East is to the West, but God will also “deal with our iniquity and not even remember it” (Hebrews 8:12). So, when God forgives, God forgives. If God forgets our sins, they don’t exist anymore, so why do we cling to our guilt over them?
According to the Word Among Us, the writer of the Hebrews understood that it’s not only about what we do; it’s about what Jesus has already done. By shedding his blood, Jesus has already won our forgiveness. Even more, he has already cleansed our consciences of that nagging sense of guilt that says, “I must be better. I must try harder.” We don’t have to convince him to forgive us or to welcome us back. Our good deeds are meant to be a response of gratitude for what Jesus has done, not an attempt to muster up enough goodness to please God.
By shedding his blood, Jesus has made us a new creation. His blood, his very life, changes everything it touches, even us! We can walk in freedom because we have already been made children of God, forgiven of every sin and washed clean by the power of Jesus’ blood.
This outpouring of God’s mercy, forgiveness and healing was so extravagant, and so out of the ordinary for the country people of Galilee, and even Jesus’ family and friends, that they thought he had lost it and set out to restrain him, as we hear in the gospel.
Ron Rolheiser OMI, who writes an article on suicide each year, often describing it as a moral cancer, receives more reaction to that article than anything else he writes. Many of the comments basically resist that message, claiming it is too good to be true! Yet on the cross, Jesus revealed to the whole world who our God truly is – humility, mercy, compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness and total non-violence.
What a loving God we have! What a merciful Saviour too! How can we help but worship him with all our hearts?
The Eucharist makes present that unconditional love of God Jesus offers us on the cross, and is itself an experience of forgiveness and healing. May our celebration today strengthen our faith in Jesus and God’s love incarnate, and empower us to out our lives in the freedom of the children of God.
