GOD'S GENTLE COERCION FOR OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE


SATURDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT

Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Ps 103:1-4,9-12; Mt 15:1-3,11-32

The Compassionate Heavenly Father

It will be hard to understand the ways of God with our human mind and using our human ways. We have mentioned the intricate and delicate work God does in the salvation of each of us, sinful as we are. The merciful and compassionate God employs many external factors to help us believe in him. God conceives us spiritually only at the confession of faith in God. Before then, we are dead and non-existent within the family of God. The compassion and mercy of God are expressed on these two different levels when we are dead in sin and when we are finally conceived spiritually as his sons. Unlike our physical birth, when our parents conceived us without our consent, our consent and cooperation are necessary for our spiritual conception. Hence, God uses external factors and things to pressure us to come to spiritual life. The needed coercion for our spiritual conception is the shepherd’s crook prophet Micah expresses in the passage. “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.” Though we live surrounded by God’s goodies and divine presence, we wallow in a thick forest and darkness because we are spiritually dead.

A new spiritual birth arises on the realisation of our sinfulness and nothingness before God. God brings about this realisation through the divine ordering of external factors and events, hemming us to accepting the offer of forgiveness and redemption he has gifted us in his Son, Jesus Christ. The prophet describes God's mercy for us: “What god can compare with you: taking fault away, pardoning crime, not cherishing anger for ever but delighting in showing mercy?” Our God is not vengeful or angry and eager to punish us. He only permits some of the consequences of our sinful choices to come to us, to halt us on our way to damnation. What God desires for us every time is a change of heart that will accommodate his graces of redemption, which he has already sent abroad to us. His grace brings about our realisation of our sinful and dead state, the necessary change of mind, and the confession of our sinfulness before him. All these are his gifts to us in his Son, Jesus Christ. “Once more have pity on us, tread down our faults, to the bottom of the sea throw all our sins.”

Indeed, God hears us whenever we call upon his mercy and compassion. The reason for all these afflictions is to bring us to our knees before him, sorrowful and eager to receive spiritual life. He sent his only Begotten Son for this purpose: to identify with us in our sinful and afflicted condition, to win our hearts back to the Father. Thus, Jesus was pleased that sinners were seeking his company, but the Pharisees and the scribes were not. “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.’” The parable of the prodigal son Jesus told them in response to their concern and complaint shows God’s fatherly and providential care for us. As we have reflected above, God desires our salvation and, not our punishment and damnation. Jesus reveals this in the parable. “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.” The core of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, who is our Father. The revelation is the foundation of our spiritual life which starts with the cry ‘Abba Father.’

Let us pray: O God, who grant us by glorious healing remedies while still on earth to be partakers of the things of heaven, guide us, we pray, through this present life and bring us to that light in which you dwell. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.   

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