Readings: Is 43 16-21; Phil 3:8-14; Jn 8:1-11
In the first reading today, the Lord says through the Prophet Isaiah that He is doing something new, therefore, we are instructed to remember not the events of the past and the things of old we are not to consider. In this case, God is speaking of doing something on a more grand scale, but when we look at the other two readings today, we will see how this needs to be applied on a personal level.
The Lord speaks of making a way in the desert and putting rivers in the wasteland. We cannot help but think of St. John the Baptist and his message of repentance when we hear about making a way in the desert. At the same time, the rivers in the wasteland not only remind us of his baptism for repentance, but the sanctifying grace God gives to us as the fruit of our repentance and the confession of our sins. If one is in the state of mortal sin, the soul, which is the dwelling place of God, is empty, dark, and arid; in other words, it is a wasteland. God’s grace brings life and beauty back into our souls.
In the second reading, St. Paul echoes what we have already heard, but puts it in a way that may be easier to understand and apply to ourselves. He tells us that he does not yet possess perfect maturity, meaning spiritual perfection, but he says that there is one thing necessary: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead as he continues his pursuit of God’s upward calling in Jesus Christ.
Applying what we have already seen, if we are in the state of sanctifying grace, that means we have confessed any mortal sins we are aware of and we have been forgiven. Recall that when God forgives, He destroys the sins and removes them completely from our souls. The effects of the sins remain, but the sin itself is gone. If God has removed the sins from our souls, then we need to accept that forgiveness and forgive ourselves.
The point of forgiving ourselves is a serious issue for many people. The devil is very proficient at bringing up past sins in order to cause us to get down on ourselves. Often people go over and over their past sins in their minds, beating themselves up, getting depressed, and thinking either that they are not forgiven or they are not forgivable. I certainly acknowledge that as human persons we are capable of committing some very horrific sins. It is also true that for many of us, when we look back, we can recall a time in our life when we could certainly not be called a good person.
The remembrance of our sins is one of the effects that remain even after the sin has been forgiven. Sometimes people think that because the sin keeps popping up in their memory that this means they are not forgiven. This is not true. The devil knows your sins and he knows what causes you the most shame. He will use this against you as he watches for your reaction when he brings up your past sins. If he sees you react in a way that gets you down or suggests that your sins are not forgiven, then he will keep coming back to this same point until you no longer react this way.
In the Gospel reading, we hear about a woman caught in adultery. It would certainly be correct to assume the woman was grateful that she was not stoned to death, but I suspect there was a conversion that took place in her soul because of the mercy our Lord extended to her. She could have spent the rest of her life beating herself up because she was such a horrible sinner or she could use this occasion to look beyond herself and glory in the goodness and mercy of God.
In order for the latter to be done, she had to accept God’s forgiveness and she had to forgive herself. To forgive is not to say it was okay, it is to do what St. Paul says and put it behind us. In such a case, the remembrance of the sin, rather than bringing shame, leads us to glorify the Lord. Notice here that forgetting what lies behind does not imply that we deny or ignore what we have done; rather, it means that we do not define ourselves according to our past deeds nor do we allow our past to pull us down. We acknowledge the evil, but we also acknowledge the mercy of God. Therefore, we do not focus on our past, but look forward to what is new: union with God in Jesus Christ!
Fr. Altier’s column appears regularly in The Wanderer, a national Catholic weekly published in St. Paul, Minn. For information about subscribing to The Wanderer, please visit www.thewandererpress.com.
