Ex 32:7-11, 13-14 / Tm 1:12-17 / Lk 15:1-32
A woman was divorced and found herself struggling with an increasingly rebellious teenage daughter. It all came to a head late one night when the police called her to pick up her daughter who’d been arrested for drunk driving. The two of them didn’t speak on the way home or next day either, till mom broke the tension by giving her daughter a small, gift-wrapped package. The girl opened it with an air of indifference and found inside a small rock. “Well, that’s cute, Mom. What is it?”
“Read the card, dear.” As the girl did so, tears began to trickle down her cheeks, and she gave her mom a hug as the card fell to the floor. On the card her mother had written: “This rock is more than 200 million years old. That’s how long it’ll take before I give up on you.”
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That’s what Jesus is telling us about God: He never gives up on us. But we certainly don’t make it easy for Him. Two habits of ours make it especially difficult for God to reach us and heal us. The first is that we lie to ourselves: “There’s nothing wrong with me. What I’m doing is perfectly okay, and I’m not hurting anybody. Besides, it’s my life! If anybody needs changing, it’s you!”
At some point or other, we all do it, and not just with little things like “just one more helping” or “just a wee drop more.”
Remember who presided over the killing of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr? It wasn’t some pagan Roman. It was St. Paul, and he was certain he was doing right. Absolutely certain — and absolutely wrong!
With a little effort we can explain away anything. And that gets us in real trouble, because it locks God out. How can we ever honestly say we’re sorry and ask for help and forgiveness, if we’ve persuaded ourselves we’re just fine? How often do you think Adolf Hitler prayed for help and forgiveness? He thought he was just fine!
This lying to ourselves has another consequence: hardening of the heart. If we fail to recognize our own desperate need for forgiveness and understanding, we’ll never be able to get inside other people’s hearts and lives and feel their need for compassion. Never! And so our likely response to others in that need will be judging, rejecting and holding in contempt, which will come right back upon us in the form of hardened hearts that cannot take in and receive compassion and love. And thus we’ve locked God out even further!
If we ever hope to experience the joy and the relief of having our sins lifted away, we have to see them, claim them, give them to God, and not hold onto them or deny them or blame them on somebody else, like an independent prosecutor. At that very moment of sad and painful self-recognition, we’ll know how much our brothers and sisters need our compassion, and we’ll be able to give them what they need. Indeed, that will be our deep desire, arising out of our own parallel pain.
Owning our sins, asking forgiveness, and giving forgiveness will tenderize our souls and let God in to do his work. And when He comes, He will bring His peace. So let Him in now! You know how! You know how!
