February 16, 2016 Tuesday, 1st Week of Lent 1st Reading: Is 55:10–11 Gospel: Mt 6:7–15 Jesus said to his disciples, “When you pray, do not use a lot of words, as the pagans do, for they hold that the more they say, the more chance they have of being heard. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need, even before you ask him.“This, then, is how you should pray:Our Father in heaven,holy be your name,your kingdom comeand your will be done,on earth as in heaven.Give us today the kind of bread we need.Forgive us our debtsjust as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us.Do not bring us to the testbut deliver us from the evil one.“If you forgive others their wrongs, your Father in heaven will also forgive yours. If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you either.” D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE (Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
More than model of all prayers, the Lord’s Prayer also calibrates how much forgiveness a person can expect from God. In effect, the phrase “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” tells us not to expect more forgiveness from God than that which we are willing to give. Other teachings of Jesus support this. In a parable the master punished his servant for not being merciful to a fellow servant in the same measure that the master forgave him of a much bigger debt. This, and other related parables, along with the Lord’s Prayer establish Jesus’ positive disposition towards the generous exercise of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a godly act. In asking us to exercise forgiveness Jesus wants us to act like gods. The more we exercise forgiveness the more we become gods. That is why he asks us to forgive “seventy times seven times”. This expression means forgiving all the time because number seven (7) in Jewish numerology is a perfect number. When we perfect the art of forgiveness we master a godly act and it perfects us. “Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect”, he said in another Gospel passage.
Why can’t God just forgive us and leave us alone in the way we settle our human conflicts? The reason is because divine forgiveness is an outpouring of grace requiring ample space in the human heart. There is no such space in a heart full of hate. Thus, divine forgiveness will always be proportional to the hate we unload from our hearts. The forgone conclusion is that we must forgive a lot because we also need a lot of forgiveness from God.
The forgoing makes the Lord’s Prayer a dangerous prayer. When we pray it with vengeful hearts we challenge God not to forgive us in the same manner that we can’t forgive others. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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