Risen Christ, help me enter into the mercy of forgiveness…

 
Acts 4:1-12

 
Forgiveness is perhaps the most important – and the most challenging – choice we make in our lives. Whether it is passive or active, that is whether I am receiving the forgiveness of my own transgressions or forgiving someone their injustice against me, the choice to enter into forgiveness releases the same streams of the mercy of God that flowed through Christ Jesus at his death and resurrection. The moment I choose mercy over revenge, words of tenderness over speaking with cutting or vitriolic intent, and compassionate understanding rather than being powerful and right, I am aligning my broken and vulnerable spirit with the Holy Spirit of Father God.  The Spirit of God, we must remember, chose to give up his only, human (made from earth), Son, “Jesus Emmanuel” , a.k.a. “God saves by being with us”, knowing that humankind would torture and crucify his beloved Son because it did not know mercy, had no vocabulary for tenderness and had sold out to the power and the “right” of the world, the flesh and the devil. That is the kind of mercy, of uncalculated Grace, that is unleashed when we choose light over darkness, love over spite and life over death -that is when we choose forgiveness and release from sin - in all aspects of our relationships. Then, upheld by the arms of mercy we are able to give and fore-give, ‘just like our Father in heaven’, and become who we are meant to be: sons and daughters of Father God released forever by forgiveness of sins.   Will I have the wisdom and the courage to choose, the mercy of forgiveness – from others for the wrongs I have done to them, to others for their transgressions against me, and for my soul’s freedom and health?
 
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.   (Matthew 5:7)
 
This is what Easter is:  it is the exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness.
Pope Francis
 
A Blessed, Holy and Happy Easter season to you and your family. May you evermore align your heart
with the will of God, as Jesus did!  
Allelulia! Even when all looked like death, it was really Life!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!
 
Soli ad gloriam Dei
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