Psalm 51:1

Have mercy on me,
O God, according to thy steadfast love;
according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

One of the great graces the God has given us ordinary people who muddle along is a whole series of wonderful role models in Scripture and the history of the Church.  These are the “riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” that Paul speaks about in Ephesians 1:18.  Some people wonder why we need to bother paying attention to the saints when we have the perfect role model in Jesus Christ, the perfect man.  But, of course, everyone knows that there are times that we can learn better from a fellow student than from the teacher who knows everything about the subject.  And good teachers know that best of all, which is why so many of them pair good students up with struggling ones.  And so, the Divine Teacher gives us (among other saints) King David, an adulterer and cold-blooded murderer, and shows us what real repentance and real forgiveness look like.  It is a sign of hope to the rest of us that, if a man like David can be forgiven of crimes like David’s crimes, we too may hope for the mercy of God.  So let us imitate David’s faith while avoiding David’s sins.  And let us be merciful as God is merciful to those, like David, who have sinned.