20150307 SIN AS FORGETFULESS AND SALVATION AS REMEMBRANCE
Readings at Mass
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First reading
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Micah
7:14-15,18-20 ©
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With shepherd’s
crook, O Lord, lead your people to pasture,
the flock that is
your heritage,
living confined in a
forest
with meadow land all
around.
Let them pasture in
Bashan and Gilead
as in the days of
old.
As in the days when
you came out of Egypt
grant us to see
wonders.
What god can compare
with you: taking fault away,
pardoning crime,
not cherishing anger
for ever
but delighting in
showing mercy?
Once more have pity
on us,
tread down our
faults,
to the bottom of the
sea
throw all our sins.
Grant Jacob your
faithfulness,
and Abraham your
mercy,
as you swore to our
fathers
from the days of long
ago.
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Psalm
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Psalm
102:1-4,9-12 ©
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The Lord is
compassion and love.
My soul, give thanks
to the Lord
all my
being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks
to the Lord
and never
forget all his blessings.
The Lord is
compassion and love.
It is he who forgives
all your guilt,
who heals
every one of your ills,
who redeems your life
from the grave,
who
crowns you with love and compassion.
The Lord is
compassion and love.
His wrath will come
to an end;
he will
not be angry for ever.
He does not treat us
according to our sins
nor repay
us according to our faults.
The Lord is
compassion and love.
For as the heavens
are high above the earth
so strong
is his love for those who fear him.
As far as the east is
from the west
so far
does he remove our sins.
The Lord is
compassion and love.
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Gospel
Acclamation
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Lk15:18
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Glory and praise to
you, O Christ!
I will leave this
place and go to my father and say:
‘Father, I have
sinned against heaven and against you.’
Glory and praise to
you, O Christ!
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Gospel
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Luke
15:1-3,11-32 ©
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The tax collectors
and the sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to
say, and the Pharisees and the scribes complained. ‘This man’ they said
‘welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he spoke this parable to them:
‘A man
had two sons. The younger said to his father, “Father, let me have the share of
the estate that would come to me.” So the father divided the property between
them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left
for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery.
‘When he
had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine, and now he began to
feel the pinch, so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put
him on his farm to feed the pigs. And he would willingly have filled his belly
with the husks the pigs were eating but no one offered him anything. Then he
came to his senses and said, “How many of my father’s paid servants have more
food than they want, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and
go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your paid
servants.” So he left the place and went back to his father.
‘While he
was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to
the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly. Then his son said,
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to
be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring out the
best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we are going to have a
feast, a celebration, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to
life; he was lost and is found.” And they began to celebrate.
‘Now the
elder son was out in the fields, and on his way back, as he drew near the
house, he could hear music and dancing. Calling one of the servants he asked
what it was all about. “Your brother has come” replied the servant “and your
father has killed the calf we had fattened because he has got him back safe and
sound.” He was angry then and refused to go in, and his father came out to
plead with him; but he answered his father, “Look, all these years I have
slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders, yet you never offered me
so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends. But, for this son of
yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property – he and his
women – you kill the calf we had been fattening.”
‘The
father said, “My son, you are with me always and all I have is yours. But it
was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was
dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.”’
SIN
AS FORGETFULESS AND SALVATION AS REMEMBRANCE
SCRIPTURE
READINGS:MICAH 7:14-15, 18-20; LK 15:1-3; 11-32
Lent is
a preparation for Easter, the feast of new life. Consequently, it is
important to know what is preventing us from this new life. The answer
that we are familiar with is sin. Corollary to the reality of sin, the
focus of today’s scripture reading highlights the theme of God’s mercy and
forgiveness to us, who are sinners. But more pointedly, the
introductory preface of today’s gospel underscores the reality of man. It
raises the question, “who is the sinner?”
Right
from the outset, St Luke tells us, “The tax collectors and the sinners were all
seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say, and the Pharisees and
the scribes complained, ‘This man,’ they said, ‘welcomes sinners and eats with
them.’ So he spoke this parable to them.” It is obvious therefore that
the primary sinners were the righteous Pharisees and scribes, since this
parable was addressed primarily to them. Of course, the tax collectors
and public sinners were not excluded. But their problem was different,
since they already knew that they were sinners. So the gospel is clear: the
sinner is all of us, regardless how holy and righteous we think we are, or
how great a sinner we feel we might be.
Yet, it
is remarkable that both the self-righteous sinner and the public sinner both
share the same mistake. What is this? Forgetfulness! Indeed, the
cause of sin is due to our forgetfulness. We forget that we are sons
of God because we forget that God is our Father! Forgetfulness leads to
alienation, which is actually what sin is all about.
The
truth is that we are just like the prodigal son; we forget that we are the
sons of the Father. Like him, we have to have complete independence
from God. We set up a false barrier between God and us. We think
like the atheists and the humanists, that God is against us and deprives us of
our freedom, and therefore of our authenticity. Of course, to be totally
autonomous from the Father is to deny our relationship with the Father, our
origin and who we are. For this reason, the prodigal son who denied
his relationship with the Father created a false independence for himself.
He sought for a false kind of freedom. He thought wrongly that the father
had taken away his freedom from him. As a result, he became lost and
indeed was reduced to a slave; a slave of others and of his shameful
actions. For so he said, “I no longer deserve to be called your son;
treat me as one of your paid servants.” It is no longer a relationship of
love but a relationship of work, or worse still, servile work.
But the
elder son is no better. He also forgot that he was the son of the
father. For when the younger son came back, he complained to the father,
“Look all these years I have slaved for you … but for this son of yours …” What
an irony! He considered the prodigal son as the son of the father but as for
himself, he was only a slave. Such an attitude too was the cause
of his unhappiness and misery. There is no joy, no life in that kind of
relationship. It leads to bitterness and resentment. When our relationship
with God is that of a slave, we cannot be happy or liberated.
Yet,
the liturgy reminds us that God is merciful, patient and always forgiving.
He is the Shepherd in today’s first reading and the Loving Father of the gospel
story. He wants to give us authentic freedom. This God pardons our crimes and
delights in showing mercy. He is the Shepherd who will lead us to
pasture. We are the heritage and the flock of God. For this reason,
the liturgy proclaims to us the unconditional love and mercy of the
Father. In the responsorial psalm, we affirm, “the Lord is compassion and
love.”
He is
waiting for us to come home. Like the prodigal father, He is hoping and
watching out for us to come home. But what does it mean to come
home? How does one come home? One must first remember his
home. Thus, to come home, one must remember. To remember is to
be saved. And so when the prodigal son remembered his father’s love,
he turned back. He said, “I will leave this place and go to my father …”
Likewise, when the elder son was reassured of the father’s faithful love, that
was perhaps when he relented. The prodigal father had to remind him that he had
always been his son and that he had given all to him. He had never
regarded him as a slave. So, too, in the first reading, it was the
Israelites’ remembrance of the mercy of God and the wonders that He worked
since the days of old, especially when God fed their forefathers in “Bashan and
Gilead” and when God led them out of Egypt, that they could continue to trust
Him in their present predicament. For this reason, the prophet
appealed to their memories of God’s promise to their forefathers and His
faithfulness. Indeed, remembrance of His fidelity and love is the way to
conversion. The past is the guarantee of our future and the basis of our
hope. Indeed, remembrance of His fidelity and love is the way to
conversion. The past is the guarantee of our future and the basis of our
hope.
For
this reason, the Mass is a memorial of God’s love in Jesus. To remember
is to be saved. The Eucharist is to help us call to memory God’s love for
us in Jesus, so that remembering who we are and who God is, as our Shepherd and
Father, we can strive to regain our original condition. By so doing, we
are saved and regain our original sonship in Christ. Indeed, this is the reason
for Christ’s coming, so that we who are dead, might come back to life as sons
of God; lost and found again. Indeed, this is our true origin and
identity, for as the prodigal father remarked, “My son, you are with me always
and all I have is yours.”
However,
in order to come home, we need to come to realization. How is this
possible? God does not force us to grow or to repent. He respects
that in our growth we might stray a while at times and be lost in order to be
found again. He always waits for us to repent. The process of
conversion is by way of suffering and remembrance. For this reason,
He allows us to go through the trials and pains of life. Indeed, as Pope
Paul VI said, “If we really lose the sense of the value of fatigue, of pain and
of tears, of anguish and of death, what are we? Defeated men! … Pain!
What immense horizons, not only of spiritual life, but of mystic and ascetical
life, too stretch before the man who views pain from a Christian
standpoint! He contemplates the crucifix, which says, ’It was through the
ways of pain and sacrifice pushed to the point of death that the world was
saved, brought back, ransomed and redeemed!’ There is a principle of
enormous fruitfulness here, as mysterious as we may wish to call it, (but the
Lord placed his redemption precisely in this mystery), a mystery of immense
usefulness and therefore of immense consolation.”
Such
was certainly the case of the prodigal and elder son of the gospel story; and
the returned exiled Israelites during the time of prophet Micah. The
prodigal son had to go through the hardship of his mistakes before he came to
realize his condition. The elder son too had to go through the pain of
anger, rejection and jealousy before he was assured that he too was the son of
the father and need not behave like a slave. The Israelites too had to go
through the subjugation of the Assyrian army, and the Babylonian exile before
they came to their senses. So suffering is part of the process of
growth. It is through participating in the paschal mystery that we can
come to realization. Through sufferings we come to understand who we are and
who the Father is.
Hence,
during this season of Lent, all these pillars of the spiritual program -
fasting, almsgiving, prayers – are meant to bring us back to memory;
through our fasting, we learn to depend on God and never take things for
granted and that we might hunger for God; through our almsgiving, we might
become more compassionate and feel with others; and through prayers, we will
become more present to God in our hearts. In this way, through the Lenten
exercises, we become more conscious of God in prayer, of our neighbours through
almsgiving and of ourselves through fasting. Thus, we will come to
appreciate that we belong to God and that all men are our brothers. By
reconciling with God, with others and with ourselves, we are brought back from
the dead to life. By remembering His love for us and the Good News we
have experienced, our fervor to bring Him to others will then increase.
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV
WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP
OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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