Thursday, March 21, 2024

Homily for Thursday, Week 5 of Lent

Homily for Thursday
5th Week of Lent

Mar. 21, 2024
Collect
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

We prayed this morning, as we often to, that God look kindly on us His mercy is the hope of us sinners.


Our prayer speaks of 3 consequences of God’s kind mercy.  The 1st is forgiveness; he cleanses us of sin.  Every time Jesus pardons sinners in the Gospels, our hearts are glad.  We, too, plead to be cleansed.

2d, the divine removal of sin remakes us; it restores us to God’s image.  We’re made holy.  His kind mercy helps us persevere in holy living.  So we pray that his mercy stay with us, and we stay with God.

3d, divine mercy, forgiveness, and holiness of life will leads to the fulfillment of God’s promise.  God promised Abraham land and offspring (Gen 17:3-9).  Jesus promises we’ll never see death (John 8:51) but will share his inheritance with him, the divine heritage of God’s children.  By the kind mercy of God, we’ll become “coheirs of eternal life,” as the 2d Eucharistic Prayer says.

God’s everlasting pact with Abraham’s descendants (Gen 17:7) includes us.  He remembers his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever” (Luke 1:54-55).  We don’t inherit geography but what Aquinas’s “O Salutaris” calls our patria, “our true native land,” the kingdom of God.

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