Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
 

1.  A story goes that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE.

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from near drowning, he wrote on a stone: TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE.

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?" The other friend replied "When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."

2. Our readings today is precisely of a God who IS the Wind that erases all our sins which are written on Sand.

In the Old Testament, the usual way a prophet began his message to the Israelites was: Shema O Israel. Hear O Israel. Before the prophet calls the people to repentance, to generosity, to rebuild the Temple, to give a message of encouragement, he would often start with recalling the great and wonderful things God did for them.

Remember O Israel

•  How God created the Universe.
• How God saved from the land of Egypt
• How God walked with you through the Wilderness.

• However this first reading it is the very person of God through the prophet, who is telling the People to do the opposite: To Forget.

Do not remember your past Miseries

Do not remember your past Sins.

Like Bob Geldorf and Bono who started “make poverty history” God wants to make their Sins a thing of the past, and even to Forget it all. Because God has forgotten it all, as well.

3. This is very encouraging in our own times. The Sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession as we knew it in the past is not used frequently today. Every now and then a penitent will come who has not been to confession for ten years or more. At the end of the Confession, I will say “Your sins are forgiven you. And in the words of Today’s reading, Isaiah 43:25 God said, “your sins I remember no more.” since your sins are history , how do you feel. In 35 years of hearing confessions, the answer is always the same: “You cannot imagine what a relief that is. It is like a burden - physical burden has been taken off my shoulders.”

4. The Gospel is also a story of forgiveness. But it is a very strange story indeed. Jesus sees the faith of the four men who bring their friend, and forgiveness is not offered to the four, but to the paralytic. He has not asked for forgiveness. He has not shown any faith. He says nothing and does nothing. He gets everything. Healing and Forgiveness. As my friends in the Pickering Charismatic Group would say: Isn’t that simply AWESOME?  Forgiveness and healing are constantly being given. God keeps no record of our Sins, Isaiah tells us in the first reading: ch. 43 vs 25.

5. Today is the 19th February, in ten days time, we will be starting the Season of Lent. We will be calling to mind the things we have done, and the things we have failed to do. Quite often when we do that, we tend to get discouraged. Like the four men in the Gospel, we need the help of our fellow Christians for encouragement, that Our God is a forgiving God. If we only think about our sins and what we have done, we are bound to be discouraged. But as in the story of the Blind Bartimaeus - we hear the Word of the Crowd saying, “Take Courage the Master is calling you.” And when we reach Jesus we hear those consoling words, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”

Elsa Joseph was a Jewish woman who was cut off from her two children. She discovered that both of her daughters had been gassed at Auschwitz. A former concert violinist, Elsa's response to this tragic news was to pick up her violin and go and play it in Germany. But she did not seek vengeance. She spoke of the world's deep need for reconciliation and forgiveness, without which it was tearing itself apart.

"If I, a Jewish mother, can forgive what happened," she said to her audiences—not only in Germany, but in Northern Ireland, and in Lebanon and in Israel—"then why can you not sink your differences and be reconciled to one another?"

They say it takes

a minute to find a special person,

an hour to appreciate them,

a day to love them,

but then an entire life to forget them.