March 6/First Friday of Lent
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities, LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered. ~ Ps 130.3-4
For some time now — for too long a time — one of the ruling dynamics in our civic discourse has been the “gotcha” mode. We revel in calling one another out, in catching one another in error, in excoriating those whose views differ from ours. We seem intent on punishing our fellow humans for their iniquities, real or imagined. In short, most of us behave as if we are entitled to give others what they deserve. Thankfully, this is not how God operates. For what if each one of us did get exactly what he or she deserved? As we review the unkind thoughts and words that we generate on any given day, the tasks we perform sloppily or not at all, the corners we cut, the grudges we hold, the acts of kindness we forego because we are busy or indifferent, we might shudder at the prospect of getting our just deserts. Today’s psalm teaches us that God is not a nitpicking deity who delights in saying, “Gotcha!” When his needy creatures call upon him from a place of deep distress, God does not push us back down into the ditch. He does not cancel us, or troll us; he declines to “mark iniquities,” as Psalm 130 puts it. Instead, he forgives, he lavishes his loving-kindness upon us, and lifts us up out of the depths to a place of peace and light. Instead of trying to “play God” by punishing and exiling those we see as transgressing, perhaps we could “play God” by refraining from judgement and extending the hand of forgiveness to our brothers and sisters, mindful of our own propensity to sin.
Compassionate Lord, I thank you this day that you do not give me what I deserve, and ask that you help me treat others with the mercy that you show me. Amen.
To hear Arvo Pärt’s “De Profundis,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdoafPTSQpE
For today’s readings, click here: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030620.cfm
