06/04/2025

Fifth Sunday of Lent

”I do not condemn you; go, and from now on, sin no more.”

These words of Jesus Christ reminded me of the quote from Oscar Wilde's play ‘A Woman of No Importance’:  "every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."  Past actions do not - as Saul becoming Paul, found out - define a person. We all  have the potential for repentance, growth and redemption.

How good or bad we have been in the past is of no consequence. It is how we are now that matters. How our ethical life will be when we run out of time and  are born into eternity will be crucial. I hope I will be capax Dei – capable of life with God in Paradise.

Last Sunday afternoon, preparing four young people for their first Confession, I made it clear for them that the past is a rehearsal for the  present. 

Admitting our failings can enable us to learn – and not only to acquire  the virtues helping us to become more Christlike in our relationships with our SONG of life: our Self, Others, Nature and God – but become more understanding and forgiving of the weaknesses of others.

Thanks to my mistakes, I have become more merciful. More Christlike. Never waste a mistake!

Accepting God’s love and thus compassion for us, we can live in hope. The theme of this Jubilee year.

As we approach Holy Week, I am reminded that though weak, I am called to be holy: to live my life for others. Doing that is Ubuntu – good for me as it frees me from my self - and good for you as I strive to make your Sunday masses uplifting – and not a long, boring, obligatory event. As, I have been told,  it is in some parishes.  As you keep coming back, it seems to be working.