Fifth of Lent 2010
March 2010
“But this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Every one of us has done bad things in the past - at least we may consider them to be bad.
Every one of us have things done or said or thought that we do not want raked over and revealed.
But many of us, in our own minds, keep raking these things over. We often think that God also keeps raking these things over and exposing them to our attention. If this is what I think, then God has every right to be angry because I am giving Him a very bad name.
Listen to St. Paul: “forgetting what lies behind I strain forward to what lies ahead.”
I should forget the past. I must stop torturing myself uselessly about things that are over and done with. I must take each day as a gift from my God and live it in a way that will bring joy to me in the future when I remember it.
We see in today’s Gospel; Jesus said to the woman who everybody wanted to stone to death, “Neither do I condemn you, from now on do not sin any more.”
God does not condemn me, God does not punish me for my sins and mistakes; It is I who condemn myself, it is I who punish myself, it is people who know of my shortcomings who condemn and punish me. It is I who am unforgiving and demand punishment, and I want to paint God with the very same brush.
The only good reason for remembering past faults is to arm myself against the same faults in the future.
The best protection against past faults is a total, but patient, trust in my God to free me from their grip.