I pray that each of you embrace God’s great love for us described in Book of Wisdom today and roughly dated to 2300 years ago:
“God, you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people’s sins that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things!”
The essence of our human potential is from God who loves us, understands us, forgives us, and has trust in us despite our human limitations and sinfulness. God has faith in our good, the potential for good God made. While we can choose to do evil, God waits for our return in Christ. We don’t often think of God having faith in us, we usually think the other way around. —We have faith in God, we trust God. But God does trust us—has faith in our good. After all, God only makes what is good. God even overlooks our sins.
The word overlook does not mean to deny or make believe it did not happen, in this context, overlook conveys the idea of not holding something against someone, to rise above or afford a view of beyond the obvious, and to look after. God does so because God sees into our goodness and patiently waits for us to correct our ways. Like parents, God gives us opportunities to repent time after time. For us it means to forgive and accept forgiveness in Christ.
However, often we cause ourselves pain as we harbor our mistakes and our sins, unwilling to overlook and forgive ourselves or to accept God’s forgiveness. We become paralyzed in a heavy burden, rather than moving on in a better direction and doing, what God wills for us. Perhaps we paralyze others because of the pain they may have caused us and refuse to offer them the chance to move on and grow-and ourselves as well.
I know personally for having held by father at bay for many years for so many things. Even though he never apologized, I never offered words of forgiveness to him. When he was dying in a hospital bed I still never said the words of healing forgiveness to him. I’ll never forget the look on his face as I left the hospital—yearning to say something to me, it should have been me to help him do so. He died while I was at Mass praying to try to give him forgiveness. It wasn’t until my ordination years later that I could truly raise him up to God saying I forgive him as you call me to Lord, may he rest in peace. Guess who finally received peace?
We want the Lord to have hope and faith in us and know that we will try again to live rightly; and we should offer the same to those who have treated us wrongly. Now I am not saying allow abuse. No one is called to tolerate abuse. However, if we internally forgive and walk away we will have true freedom.
If we are causing pain to others, we do need to pay attention to our guilt, our dissatisfaction within ourselves, so that we can improve—as Zacchaeus did. Such disappointments can be a call to get out of tree climb down to live a better life of God’s trust in us in Jesus Christ.
The call from Jesus to Zacchaeus to come down out of the tree is also to us: to come down from those trees of hiding in our sins to a life in Jesus and stay with Him. Perhaps the hiding tree is self-abusive destructive addictive behaviors- with alcohol or drugs or food or porn or sex; hiding in denial. There can be endless causes for hiding in trees trying to conceal shame, guilt, –sin.
Maybe you have hurt people badly by being a bully…or keep fighting with your sister or brother…or destroyed someone’s reputation by gossip… elder abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse or perhaps had an abortion…or encouraged an abortion. The Lord looks up into those trees and sees persons who need Him. The Lord calls out “I want to stay with you… and heal you by forgiveness and love; come to me” His mercy, and compassion and love are infinitely greater and more powerful than our sins.
God sees our sins as a loving parent would and encourages our reconciliation for our growth into a better human being—to be a better child–to be more Christ like. To see the good within us is to see God within us. We then see our worth we find freedom and peace from paralyzing pain through God’s remarkable gratuitous love. For God sees into our hearts with our noble and not so noble motives and has faith in us and loves us in Jesus Christ.
Come to the Tree of new heights in Christ, come to the Sacrament of Confession, to be forgiven, healed by the Lord who knows all we have done and loves us into the child of goodness He created.