Monday of the Second Week of Lent

Readings of the Day

The readings for today begin in a strange manner. The first reading from Daniel starts us off with a great cry to the Lord, proclaiming that he is “great and awesome,” and that he keeps his “covenant of love.”  But then, the reading plunges into a long diatribe about how “we,” the people of God, have sinned and been wicked and have failed.  

Yet, it is not the long list of sins and rebellion that make up the tone of the reading. Instead of sounding desperate and pessimistic, the laundry list of sins is proclaimed with the open honesty of a child, crying out to his parent when he is hurt.  We can imagine a child crying “Mom! Dad!  I’ve hurt myself!  Come quick and help me!  I need you to make it all better!”   That’s more like what this reading sounds like. This child is fully confident that someone who loves him will hear and come running to help.

This attitude turns out to be exactly what Jesus tells us to do in the Gospel – to be “merciful, just as your father is merciful.”  When a loved child calls out in pain, the parent responds in love, not judgement. We can trust that our Father is merciful, loves us and wishes to save us. When we recognize that we have fallen, we should cry out to God to help us. Then, we should treat others with the same mercy.  Children often pick up their behavior from the behavior their parents model.  If God is merciful to us, then we should imitate that to others. As his children, we imitate his behavior.

Jesus tells us to take on the attitude of a child, not that of a parent. He tells us not to judge, but to forgive and to share. In other words, he reminds us to leave the judging in the hands of the only one who can judge – God, and for us to remain in the place of the loved child. This is a continuation of the theme of the readings from the last several days. It is summed up in the Our Father, the prayer Jesus himself gave us, which he addresses to his loving Father, Abba. In the Our Father, we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. “ We are to take on the ways of the Father, to be children of God, so that his Kingdom may come.

Sarah Pedrozo is Director of Family Catechesis and Evangelization at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Austin, Texas.

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