Tuesday of the Third Week in Lent

Today's Mass Readings

Lent is a great season of forgiveness. It reminds us of the trials and hardships Jesus underwent in order to win our forgiveness. Our readings for today provide us with a strong message of forgiveness. In these readings, however, it is not the comfort of our own forgiveness that is emphasized. Rather, it is the responsibility that we have to forgive others. Indeed, in today's reading from the Gospel of Matthew, our own forgiveness is made contingent on our forgiving others. This is consistent with what we pray at every Mass, and every day, in the Our Father: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
If we wish to be forgiven, we must forgive others who sin against us. It can be very difficult to forgive others when they have trespassed against us. In those moments, perhaps we can remind ourselves how God has forgiven us, how we have offended God even by the smallest trespasses. We need to become more like Azariah from today's first reading from the Book ofDaniel, where he prayed on behalf of his fellow Israelites. Keep in mind the first line from that reading: "Azariah stood up in the fire and prayed aloud."

The three holy servants of God have been thrown into the fire by King Nebuchadnezzer and are praying to God on behalf of their fellow Israelites, while they are in the fire. During our times of trials we too need to pray for one another, and we need especially to forgive those who sin against us.

Forgiveness is not an excuse to bless someone's evil actions. God forgave and forgives us, but that does not mean that our sins are ok. They are not. Our sins put Jesus on the cross. Therefore, we are forgiven. As the evangelical song goes: "I'm forgiven, because You were forsaken. I'm alive and well, your Spirit lives within me, because You died and rose again." Forgiving someone implies they have actually done something wrong. Forgiveness is also an active refusal to victimized. It is an outpouring of love in response to evil and sin. It is a form of spiritual combat. When we forgive others, we are actively fighting evil (not others so much as sin itself) and we are actively cooperating with God to bring peace to the world.

During this season of Lent, let's make a special effort to forgive at least one person who has trespassed against us. Let's learn to carry this practice beyond Lent and make our entire lives examples of forgiveness.Today let's think about one person in particular in our lives who has done something wrong to us, and let's forgive them, or at least pray to God that He would change our hearts so that we would grow and become able to forgive them.

Let us pray for one another for the strenght to forgive as Jesus forgives.

- Jeff Morrow