My wife and I were in Oklahoma City over the weekend to attend the funeral Mass and graveside for a beloved great uncle who passed away a week ago. At the end of the funeral Mass, one of his eldest sons got in front of the congregation and expressed his gratitude for families and friends who traveled near and far to show love and support for his mother and their family in their time of mourning the loss of their beloved one. Then, he spoke to his deceased father and begged his forgiveness for the times that he was not the son that he should have been for him.
His son’s words moved and struck me because they brought home what I shared in my homily last Monday: “Bishop Robert Barron reminds us that we do not take ‘our money, our social status, or our worldly power into the next world; but we do take the quality of our love.’” The quality of our love starts with our family where, built on the foundation of faith in God, we learn to love, to forgive, and to show each other mercy in the same way that God loves us, forgives us, and shows us mercy. This is what Jesus teaches us in today’s Gospel, saying to us now, as he said to his disciples then: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. . . Forgive and you will be forgiven.”
Moreover, today’s first reading, in which Daniel wrote - “O LORD, we are shamefaced. . . for having sinned against you. But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!” - reminded me of this prayer that is said at the Vigil for the Deceased: “Confident that God always remembers the good we have done and forgives our sins, let us pray, asking God to gather N. to himself” (Order of Christian Funerals). Oftentimes, the death of a loved one moves us to reflect on the brevity of our own life and, in a way, forces us to ask ourselves, “what is the quality of our love?” Like Daniel, in today’s first reading, we reflect on the times we “have sinned, been wicked and done evil; [when] we have rebelled and departed from [God’s] commandments and [His] laws” in our own lives and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, find the courage to turn away from sin and turn to our Lord and our God, who is filled with “compassion and forgiveness,” and ask him to have mercy on us a sinner.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, on Ash Wednesday, we received ashes on our foreheads in the sign of the cross to remind us that we are sinners in need of a Savior and that we are dust and to dust we shall return, and that we are called to repent and believe in the Gospel. And so, as we continue our journey in the desert with our Lord Jesus Christ this penitential season of Lent, let us pray, fast, and give alms with “[confident] that God always remembers the good we have done and forgives our sins” and strive to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful.
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