In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Our Lady, Mother of Mercy.
St. Joseph.
St. Patrick.
Our patron saints and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We've been listening to a retreat on CD,
and the priest was saying the definition of grace and mercy.
Grace is that where we receive that which we do not deserve,
and mercy is that which we,
do not receive what we do deserve.
And that's what, you know, during this time of,
this season of Lent,
our Lord is saying to be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful.
That, why should we forgive our neighbor?
He doesn't deserve it, and maybe sometimes comes to our mind.
Well, that's the whole point.
Forgiveness is part of mercy.
That we forgive those, not because they deserve it,
but because God is asking us to be like Him.
You know, He was merciful towards us.
We didn't deserve to be forgiven.
We didn't deserve to be redeemed.
But God, in His great kindness and love,
that charity poured out,
and that God is charity, that's His essence.
That is why mercy and love is so clear,
and so closely united.
It's, they're synonymous with God.
They're the same thing.
And so, He's asking us to imitate Him,
and to imitate the Trinity in our being forgiving.
Many times, we are so slow to forgive those who have wronged us,
and we were reminded in Scripture that we should be slow to anger,
and quick to forgive.
Many times, we're the opposite.
We are,
slow to forgive and quick to anger.
And this is the time, this season of Lent,
is a good time to examine our consciences
and see, is there someone that I haven't yet forgiven?
Maybe it's a long time ago.
But we should still forgive,
to say that, Lord, have mercy on them,
and have mercy on me.
Our Lord also today in the Gospel said,
stop judging and you will not be judged.
Many people sometimes confuse this to be
that they think because they see something that their neighbor did is wrong,
that they shouldn't be thinking that,
or shouldn't make that judgment.
Well, it's the nature of our mind, our intellect,
to make judgments.
Our intellect is made to know the truth.
And so, therefore, it's also, in one sense,
in knowing the truth, can see error, and falsehood, and wrong.
And we, that's just the nature of our intellect.
We see somebody do something and we may say to ourselves,
well, that's not good.
That's wrong.
That's not true.
And our Lord is saying we can't,
we're not to stop making those kind of judgments
because that's the way our mind is made up.
And that's the way it is made to do,
is to recognize truth,
and to also, and then recognizing truth,
to point out error,
and to recognize wrongdoing.
But what he's saying is that don't judge like God,
because he says in the next sentence,
stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Our judgment should not be to condemnation,
but maybe it should be to correction.
If you see your brother doing wrong,
obviously you made a judgment.
And so, therefore, you may, in charity,
be asked to correct them,
to give fraternal correction.
Or, if all you can do is pray for them,
the reason why God allowed you to see their fault
or their wrongdoing is to ask you to pray for them.
And there are times when you may have to reveal
someone else's fault to another person.
Parents do it all the time when they talk about their children
and what they did wrong.
You may be, in some way,
obligated to, for the good of the common,
for the good of the common good,
you might say, for the common good,
to reveal the faults of someone
who may be running for a particular office
and that may not have the proper character
or moral integrity to hold that position.
Obviously, we don't seem to be too concerned about that,
for everybody we seem to be putting in office these days,
that might be a good thing
to point out people's faults publicly
and that they don't have the right moral character
to be in charge of the common good.
But it's not for the sake of pointing that out
that we're wanting them to be condemned
or that we're judging them as not having hope of reform.
It's just that we don't believe that they have shown
that they have faults,
which may be an obstacle to them holding a public office
or to having some authority
or to be corrected and to be called to task.
And then our Lord is telling us that,
in one sense, by our judgments,
that we should measure out,
be very slow to measure out
you might say, the bad judgments of things,
but rather to maybe look to the good
and to do good.
To the measure we measure out
will be measured back to us.
That we want to be merciful.
To the degree that we are merciful,
we will receive mercy.
That is how we receive mercy,
is by forgiving others.
And as we say,
the Our Father seems to be showing that
when it says,
forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
You know, this is so important,
this aspect of forgiveness,
because it is really the,
one of the central messages
of our Catholic faith,
forgiveness.
We are,
what was it that our Lord said to His apostles?
You know, to go out and reconcile the world,
to reconcile sinners,
to preach forgiveness,
to preach God's mercy.
And we should also be
instruments of that mercy today.
Like Saint Patrick,
who was called by his charity
for God and neighbor,
a people that he had been
taken in captivity to,
and lived as a slave.
You know, he could have,
once he finally got his freedom,
could have said,
I'm never going to go back
to those people again.
But there was something about them
that he saw goodness in them,
even though they were pagan.
And he was moved by God's love
to want to go back
and bring them the message of the faith.
And he forgave them,
and it became a source of much grace,
we see the beautiful
graces that came to Ireland
because it embraced the faith.
And we pray for Ireland today
because it seems to be
going in the wrong direction,
like so much of our Western civilization.
That we pray that Saint Patrick
will intercede that
he will help to bring
the faith back to its
glory in Ireland.
That people
who have been
caught up in secular
mentality and
atheistic mentality,
that they will
once again return back
to their ancient roots
of their Catholic faith.
And see that that
is what brings the glory
and the good things
to Ireland.
We pray also for
those who have the task
of being missionaries,
that they will endure
the hardships,
the difficulties,
and be encouraged
knowing that they all
are for the good
if embraced with
that kind of love
that Saint Patrick had.
You know they talk about
the old Irish monks
that they used to do penance.
They were known for quite
sometimes seems heroic penances.
Standing in cold ice,
ice water cold streams
while they prayed the Psalms
as a way of offering up
that penance for the conversion
of their pagan brothers
and sisters.
And we too can see that
our penances during Lent
can have great
apostolic
good
if we offer them and unite
them to deny ourselves
so that someone else may receive
a grace to come into the church.
Or to embrace the faith
or to be reconciled
to God.
There's so many out there
who say they are Catholic
just within our own
household of faith
who claim to be Catholic
but haven't gone to confession
in years
and haven't even probably
stepped into a church.
That Catholic is just
a label they wear.
But we need to pray
and offer penances for them
that they will return back
to their household
to the faith.
In the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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