Decide to return to the Father's Heart

THE WORD IN LENT - 2nd week, Saturday

March 14, 2020: Micah 7:14-15,18-20; Luke 15: 1-3,11-32

Point for Dialogue #15: God's Faithfulness and Our faithfulness to God

Faithfulness of God to God's people is expressed in God's boundless mercy. We are called to be faithful, because God is faithful to us. Just as St. Paul writes to Timothy, even if we are faithless, God remains faithful (2 Tim 2:13). It is the faithfulness of God that inspires and gives us the strength to be faithful.

The first reading explains how this has always been so in history; and in the Gospel, Jesus presents this fact with a parable which  pictures the Father's heart with an incredible clarity: a heart that is forgiving, welcoming, compassionate, merciful, kind, unconditionally loving and absolutely faithful. 

The Word today invites a heartful dialogue between God's faithfulness and our faithfulness, not to only to remind us how undeserving we are, but above all to insist on the grace of God's closeness to us and God's unfailing love for us.

When once, I shared this with a group of youngsters, one of them asked - 'but why should God forgive me and why should God be so merciful?' The answer was so simple, 'because "God is Love" (1 Jn 4:8)'. It is not merely that God loves, but the fact is, God is Love! God is madly in love with us... and that immense love is greater than any of my sin, it is greater than any force that blocks me from getting closer to God. 

All that I need to do is to DECIDE like that son, "I will rise and go to my Father!"; all that I need to do today, is DECIDE to return to the Father's mercy; avail of the bountiful gift of forgiveness at the sacrament of reconciliation and be drenched in the mercy that flows from the Father's heart.