A MERCIFUL AND COMPASSIONATE FATHER

Saturday, Second week of Lent
Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP

Theme: A Merciful and Compassionate Father

The mystery of the Trinity is central to the Gospel message preached by Jesus Christ. The core of that mystery is the revelation of God the Father, who is merciful and compassionate. This revelation is the central message our Lord Jesus Christ presented of his heavenly Father. So, as we conclude this week’s reflection, listening to the Son as admonished by the Father from the gospel of the second Sunday of Lent, we focus on the image of God as a loving and compassionate Father. This image corresponds to the message of repentance we received from the Lord. We all have sinned, and we have all fallen short of the grace of God. The vocation to repentance goes out to every human person. But to heed the message is to acknowledge and own up our sins and shortcomings in our relationship to God. The only Begotten Son revealed the true nature of God that we may really understand the nature of our sin. We have disobeyed the loving will of our heavenly Father, and gone our own way. We have abandoned the good he willed for us and chosen evil by our own accord. The prophet Micah describes God in these words: “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.” It is in the nature of God to forgive sins, as Jesus Christ revealed within the week, beckoning on us to be perfect as our heavenly Father who forgives sins. 


The mindset which our chosen principle for our Lenten observance, I am dust and will return to dust, infuses in us is in accord with the gospel of repentance. Acknowledgment of our nothingness and our inability to achieve any good by ourselves opens our hearts to the heavenly Father, who calls into existence what does not exist. As we prepare and go for our sacramental confessions this Lenten season, which is essential for our journey back to God, he creates a pure heart and a willing spirit within us. Our turning away from sin and evil is all the doing of our heavenly Father. In the parable of the prodigal son, which our Lord used to illustrate God the Father’s love for the strayed and his desire for our return to him, we see this very clearly. “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.” The remembrance of his father’s generosity to his workers turned the prodigal son’s heart back to his father. This nudging is the working of grace in our sinful hearts. This grace works even more forcefully when we remember the Father’s gift of his only Begotten Son for our salvation. If the Father has given us his Son, what will he not give up to have us back to him?  “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.” Let us dwell on the image of our heavenly Father running to repossess and reestablish us in the state of grace he desires for us.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, to yield to the promptings of your grace within us so that we may experience your unfathomable divine mercy.   


 

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