GOD WILL HEAL US

March 29, 2025 – Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032925.cfm)

“Putting someone in a box” is an idiomatic expression in which we limit or categorize a person unfairly. We put a limit to a person’s character, qualities and whole being based on the label or role that we fix for them. This is a form of judging others that deprives them of hope, of healing.

Indeed, we could become the righteous individuals who scrutinize people, searching for their faults. We could be that mean person whose main intention is to bring other people down by shaming and gossiping their weaknesses in order to hide our own sins. This happens among our families, circle of friends, in our workplaces or even in our organizations and communities.

The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus addressed a parable “to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.”

To become self-righteous and be convinced of it, blinds us. Thinking highly too much of ourselves prevents us from asking God to show his mercy upon us. Egoism believes that we do not need God’s mercy.

In fact, when we become “the self-righteous person,” we begin to think of ourselves so highly that God is as if obliged to be good to us. Our heart is so perverted that we also begin to believe that God has to pay us for being good and righteous.

Such was the case of the Pharisee in the parable. There was a reversal of relationship. God is as if the servant of this righteous person. Although he might be after of the rewards in his life for being righteous, yet, he was actually seeking to control God through his self-righteousness. Nevertheless, this attitude leads us to build an invisible wall that separates us from others.

We might still have that idea of condemning our brothers and sisters who were considered terrible sinners. We too might have that attitude of separating those people whom we consider as unclean for fear of being contaminated and be associated with them.

Yet, Jesus invites us today to rather look closely at ourselves and to examine better our intentions, thoughts and actions. This will lead us to that recognition of our failures and sins. This realization will hopefully make us to also join the tax collector in praying, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

By recognizing and owning our brokenness and sins, then, we begin to take the steps to come closer to the Lord. Hosea expressed this today, “Come, let us return to the Lord, it is he who has rent, but the Lord will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds.”

We remind ourselves that to both the righteous and the sinner, God does not condemn. The Lord desires our healing, reconciliation and fullness of life for all.

This calls us to see more in the person of our brothers and sisters. We are challenged to stop our harsh judgments and condemnations. Stop our gossiping and image shaming that only destroy the image of our brother or sister.

We are invited to be more understanding of those who failed but not in the sense of condoning such failures and sins. We are invited to be merciful rather than to be condemning. Hinaut pa.