Monday, November 10, 2014 St. Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Mass Reading & Meditation for November 10, 2014

Meditation: Luke 17:1-6

Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Forgive. (Luke 17:3)

Jesus wasn’t tiptoeing around the issue. Millstones are heavy. Large ones, like the one Jesus refers to in today’s Gospel reading, can weigh more than a ton. Still, we can get so focused on the millstone that we lose the heart of his central message here: if you have been sinned against, you need to forgive. Seven times or seven times seventy times, it amounts to the same thing: every time. Jesus wasn’t just offering a public rebuke to the ones who cause people to sin. He was telling all of us to forgive!
We have all been hurt at some time in our lives, and sometimes the memory of that hurt can stay with us for a long, long time. If we don’t deal with our pain through the gift of forgiveness, it can become a constant companion: a recurring complaint, a rancorous story told repeatedly, a sad movie that plays persistently in our thoughts. Whether we speak about the hurt or keep it bottled up inside, the result is the same: resentment and fear and shame deepen; bitterness festers. The chains that those emotions forge tighten and become heavier and heavier.
We don’t have to live in that kind of bondage! Forgiveness is the key. Forgive. And if the hurt resurfaces, forgive again. And again. Seven times seventy times, if necessary.
Sometimes, all you need is to take just one small step to forgive a hurt. Other times, you need to take a number of steps, over a long period of time, before you get your heart to a place where you can forgive. Whatever it takes, as long as you are trying to move forward, your heavenly Father will help you along.
Then there are those times when the pain is too sharp and the offense is too great for you to forgive. Know that even in these situations, God sees your heart, and he will ask you only to take the steps that you can take at that moment. Ever patient and compassionate, he is with you to help you and to heal your wounds.
So whatever your situation, picture your heavenly Father sitting next to you, his arm around your shoulder. Tell him what hurts. Tell him how hard it is to forgive. And ask him for his help. Give him time, just as he is giving you time, and he will help you take the next step. And the next one. And the next one.
“Father, help me to forgive. Heal me so that I can let go of anything that is holding me back!”

Titus 1:1-9; Psalm 24:1-6

HEAL ME LORD SONG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeUPu4y59pw

Mass at Santa Marta - Sinful Christians

         2014-11-10 L’Osservatore Romano

“Sin, forgiveness and faith” are three closely linked words that the Pope put forth during Mass on Monday morning, 10 November in the chapel of Casa Santa Marta. He extracted them from a passage of the Gospel according to Luke (17:1-6), which speaks of these three very things. They “are three words of Jesus”, Pope Francis pointed out, and “perhaps they weren’t said together, at the same time, but the evangelist puts them together”. And thus began the Pontiff’s reflection.

The first of the three terms underscored by the Pope is “sin”. “To me”, he confided, “it is striking how Jesus concludes” his discourse: after speaking about sin he says: “Take heed to yourselves”. Thus, he uses a “harsh” expression, asking them “not to sin”. Luke writes that is Jesus himself who says: “temptations to sin are sure to come”; but he also adds: “woe to him by whom they come!”. And more precisely: “woe to him who should cause one of these little ones, the People of God, to sin; the weak in faith, children, young people, the elderly who have lived a life of faith, woe to him who causes them to sin! It would be better to die!”.

Jesus also addresses these particularly “harsh” words “to us, to Christians”. And as a result “we have to ask ourselves: Do I sin?”. And even before that, “what is sin?”. The Pope explained that sin “is to assert and profess a lifestyle — ‘I’m a Christian’ — and then to live as a pagan who believes in nothing”. And “this amount to sin because it lacks testimony: faith confessed is life lived”.

Along this line of reasoning Francis turned to the First Reading, taken from the Letter of Paul to Titus (1:1-9), highlighting that “Paul is writing to his disciple, Bishop Titus, and advises him how priests, bishops, who are God’s stewards, should behave”. And “he gives other advice: that the priest — whether a priest or bishop — be beyond reproach; not be arrogant, not look down on everyone; not be irascible, but be meek, not inclined to wine, spiritual not irreverent; that he not be violent but peaceful; not greedy for dishonest gain, not attached to money, but hospitable, a lover of good, level-headed, just, holy, self-controlled, true to the Word so worthy of the faith that he has been taught”. For “when a priest — whether a priest or bishop — does not live like this, he sins, he causes scandal”. And one is led to point out to him: “You, teacher, tell us one thing but do another!”. And about this the Pope stated: “The sins of priests do such harm the to the People of God, so much harm! The Church suffers so much because of this!”.

These words are about priests but they also apply “to all Christians”. It does not become “permissible to be arrogant, irascible, drunk” simply by the fact that one isn’t a priest. The words, therefore, are “for everyone”, the Pontiff remarked. One must realize that “when Christian men or women, who go to Church, who go to a parish, do not live this way, they sin”.

After all, Francis continued, we often hear “I don’t go to Church because it’s better to be honest and stay home” than to be like those “who go to Church and then do this, this and that...”. Thus we can see that “sin destroys, it destroys faith”. And “this is why Jesus is so harsh” and repeats: “Take heed of yourselves, be careful!” This very exhortation of Jesus “will do us good to repeat today: Take heed of yourselves!”. For “we are all capable of sinning”.

The second word that Luke offers is “forgiveness”. In the Gospel, Jesus “speaks about forgiveness, and he advises us to never tire of forgiving: always forgive. Why? Because I have been forgiven”. Indeed, “the first one forgiven in my life was me. And for this reason I have no right not to forgive: I am required, because of the forgiveness that I received, to forgive others”. Thus, “forgive: one time, two, three, seventy times seven, always! Even in the same day!”. And here, the Pontiff clarified, Jesus “exaggerates in order to help us understand the importance of forgiveness”. Because Christians incapable of forgiving “sin: they aren’t Christians”. This is why he tells them, “to frighten them a bit: if you cannot forgive, neither can you receive God’s forgiveness”. In other words, we “must forgive” because we have been “forgiven”.

This truth “is in the Our Father: Jesus taught it there”, the Pope recalled. Of course, he acknowledged, the subject of forgiveness “isn’t understood in human logic”. In fact, “human logic leads you to not forgive, to revenge; it leads you to hatred, to divisiveness”. And thus we see “so many families divided” because they lack forgiveness, “so many families! Children distant from parents; a husband and wife drifted apart...”. For this reason, “it is so important to think this: if I don’t forgive, I don’t have — it seems I won’t have — the right to be forgiven, or I don’t understand what it means that the Lord has forgiven me”.

Of course, the Pope stated, it’s understandable why, on “hearing these things, the disciples said to the Lord: ‘Increase our faith!’”. Indeed, “without faith one cannot live without sinning and always forgiving”. We truly need the “light of faith, that faith which we have received, the faith of a merciful Father, of a Son who gave his life for us, a Spirit who is inside us and helps us grow, the faith in the Church, the faith in the baptized and holy People of God”. And “this is a gift: faith is a gift”. No one”, Francis said receives faith from books or by “going to conferences”. After all, precisely because “faith is a gift of God who comes to you, the Apostles said to Jesus: ‘Increase our faith!’”.

The Pontiff concluded by suggesting an earnest reflection on “these three words: sin, forgiveness and faith”. Regarding sin, he recapped, it’s enough to remember “only those words of Jesus: ‘Take heed to yourselves!’ This is dangerous”: better “to be cast into the sea” than to sin. Regarding forgiveness then, the Pope invited us to always remember that we were forgiven first. And last, the aspect of faith, without which he repeated, “a life without sin and a life of forgiveness” could never be possible.

http://www.radiovaticana.va/player/index_fb.asp?language=en&visualizzazione=VaticanTic&Tic=VA_2CS3WUSN