Listening to God is living for God
THE WORD IN LENT 2026 – SATURDAY SECOND WEEK
March 07 – Micah 7: 14-15,18-20; Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32
Listening to God is living for God, and living for God is living
as God wants, that is open to new life that God gives constantly. We know our
weaknesses and our struggles. Our life is constantly stifled and thwarted by
our limitations and our thoughtless choices. As the responsorial psalm reminds
us today, if God were to treat us according to our merits, where would we be!
But God does not treat us depending on our merits, but depending on God’s
mercies; God is merciful and it is that mercy that renews our lives constantly.
Living for God is living with God, that is the
guarantee of new life. To be led by the crook and the staff of the Divine
Shepherd is the sign of being God’s own. By our choices many a time we choose
to go away from God, abandon God’s ways and go on our own, but rarely realising
that we are going away from life. It is the mercy of God that brings us back to
Godself and makes us once again, God’s own.
Living for God is living as God wants. The will of
God is not merely following laws and commandments… they matter because they
help us to live in God, and it cannot be automatically vice versa – that is
what Jesus time and again taught them, taught us – that living by rules cannot
ensure that you are living in God, but living in mercy and love does. Living as
God wants is living in love and mercy, in pardon and mutual acceptance, thus
forming one family of brothers and sisters who accept each other along with out
faults and failures.
Living for God is living like God, that is
becoming like God, ever open to new life and offering it to everyone around. As
Jesus says, we are called to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect – the
perfection here referring to the mercy of God. Realising one’s own limitations
and returning to God, forgiving the other’s limitations and accepting the other,
owning God’s love and not slavishly squandering it when it is offered to us so
gratuitously.
The call is therefore to live in love, acknowledging the renewing
presence of God and beholding life, the new life that God constantly gifts us
with, in and through so many ways – this is in short living for God; and that
comes forth as an essential sign of listening to God.