Daily Thought For February 25, 2017

The Journey To True Freedom Is Found In God’s Infinite Mercy

 

     The Gospel helps us understand who God truly is. He is the Merciful Father who in Jesus loves us beyond all measure.

     The errors we commit, even if they are serious, do not corrode the fidelity of his love. In the Sacrament of Confession we can always start out afresh in life. He welcomes us, he restores to us our dignity as his children.

     Let us therefore rediscover this sacrament of forgiveness that makes joy well up in a heart reborn to true life.

     Furthermore, this parable [The Parable of the Prodigal Son] helps us to understand who the human being is: he is not a "monad", an isolated being who lives only for himself and must have life for himself alone.

     On the contrary, we live with others, we were created together with others and only in being with others, in giving ourselves to others, do we find life.

     The human being is a creature in whom God has impressed his own image, a creature who is attracted to the horizon of his Grace, but he is also a frail creature exposed to evil but also capable of good. And lastly, the human being is a free person.

     We must understand what freedom is and what is only the appearance of freedom.

     Freedom, we can say, is a springboard from which to dive into the infinite sea of divine goodness, but it can also become a tilted plane on which to slide towards the abyss of sin and evil and thus also to lose freedom and our dignity......

     Every time, such as today, that we participate in the Eucharist, the source and school of love, we become capable of living this love, of proclaiming it and witnessing to it with our life.

     Nevertheless, we need to decide to walk towards Jesus as the Prodigal Son did, returning inwardly and outwardly to his father.

     At the same time, we must abandon the selfish attitude of the older son who was sure of himself, quick to condemn others and closed in his heart to understanding, acceptance and forgiveness of his brother, and who forgot that he too was in need of forgiveness.

 

Pope Benedict XVI