“Neither
do I condemn you. Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.” (John 8:11)
What an extraordinary week
it has been to be a Catholic. To witness
history and see our new Holy Father elected has been something remarkable. Even more amazing has been seeing him so
actively exercising the Petrine ministry in his own unique way. Two examples come to mind of how
extraordinary this pope is (and really, all popes are extraordinary in their
own right): the first came on Thursday
when he celebrated his first Mass as Pope with the cardinals in the Sistine
Chapel. He didn’t go the traditional
route of reading a prepared homily from a text while sitting in his char. No, he went straight to the ambo, like
priests do around the world every day, and without reading from a text preached
to us from the heart in a short 7 minutes.
The second example came this morning when he said Mass at the parish
church of the Vatican, St. Ann, where he preached a 5 minute homily on today’s
gospel (it takes me 5 minutes just to warm up) and after Mass, again, he did
what priests around the world do after Mass, he stood at the doorway of the
church and greeted parishioners as they left.
Pope Francis is truly one of a kind.
But back to his homilies. This
morning the Holy Father highlighted the depths of God’s mercy. When referring to the gospel of the
adulterous woman, he reminded us that like the accusers in the gospel, we are
are faster to condemn than to forgive.
But the pope’s brilliance came when he uttered the following line: “The Lord never tires of forgiving us, never!
We are the ones who get tired of asking
for forgiveness.”
The
last two weeks we have witnessed in the gospel God reaching out to
forgive. Last week, we saw the father of
the prodigal son run to his son to forgive him.
This week, Jesus approaches the woman caught in adultery to show her his
divine mercy. As we approach Holy Week,
the Lord is calling out to us, inviting us, and imploring us to return to him
especially in the sacrament of confession.
This coming weekend is Reconciliation Weekend in the Archdiocese of
Miami and there are parishes all over who will be open and filled with priests
on Friday night and Saturday morning and afternoon so that we may go to
confession. Christ is reaching out to us
as he did to the woman in the gospel. He
does not condemn us. He wants to forgive
us.
One
of the striking things about our new Pope is the choice of the name Francis in
memory of St. Francis of Assisi. He
admitted yesterday that he chose it because he was told by a brother cardinal
upon his election to remember the poor.
But as we contemplate the life of St. Francis of Assisi, we cannot
forget the story of how he was praying before the crucifix in San Damiano
centuries ago and heard the voice of the Lord tell him clearly from the cross:
“Francis, rebuild our church.” This may
very well be the call of our new Holy Father, but in his first homilies, he has
already reminded us that the rebuilding of the church must begin in our
hearts. We must embrace the cross of
Jesus because there we find true love, and we must be able to seek the Lord’s
forgiveness, which he will give to us over and over again because that is how
much he loves us. New hearts=Strong
Church! Approach the Lord in confession
these last two weeks of Lent. Do not be
afraid. Do not let these extraordinary
days of grace go by without allowing that grace to transform your heart. “The Lord never tires of forgiving us,
never! We are the ones who get tired of
asking for forgiveness.”
