HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF 2ND WEEK OF LENT, LITURGICAL CALENDAR – YEAR B
THEME: Grant pardon, and you will be pardoned.
BY: Fr Deotacious Chikontwe SMA
READINGS OF THE DAY
Daniel 9:4-10.
Psalm 78:8-9,11,13.
Luke 6:36-38
LITURGICAL COLOUR
PURPLE/VIOLET
INTRODUCTION
Good morning my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate Monday of the Second Week of Lent, Liturgical Calendar Year B.
ALSO RECOMMENDED: HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF THE 1ST WEEK OF LENT, LITURGICAL CALENDAR / YEAR B
FROM OUR FIRST READING
The first reading from the Book of Daniel is one of the great acts of sorrow to God for sin in the Bible. It is prayed on behalf of the whole people. It is a prayer that expresses both a great sorrow for sin and a great confidence in God’s mercy, ‘we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God mercy and pardon belong, because we have betrayed him’. Humility and trust are very clearly revealed in the prayer. We need both when we come before the Lord, the humility to acknowledge that we have not always lived as God calls us to live, and the total trust in God’s mercy which is always stronger than sin.
FROM OUR GOSPEL READING
In the gospel reading this morning Jesus calls upon us not to judge and not to condemn. He did so in the knowledge that judging and condemning others can sometimes come all too easily to us. In judging and condemning others we can easily forget that we are not paragons of virtue ourselves. In contrast to judging and condemning others, Jesus calls on us in our dealings with others to be compassionate and to grant pardon. These are contrary attitudes to judging and condemning, and Jesus implies that there are much more in keeping with how God relates to us than judging and condemning are. It seems that God is much more in the business of showing us compassion and granting us pardon when we seek it, than he is in the business of judging and condemning us.
CONCLUSION
As people made in the image of God we are to be as compassionate and as pardoning as God himself. Jesus of course was the perfect image of God and he gave expression to God’s compassionate and pardoning love in the most complete way possible. The gospel reading assures us that when, like Jesus, we are God-like in our dealings with other, then we open ourselves to receive an abundance from God.
May God bless us all, and may He lead us all ever more into His Holy Presence, and bless our Lenten observances and journey. Amen.
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