What does it mean to be “reconciled with God”? This video offers great insights into the process of forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. Fr. Mike explains how God offers all 3 stages to us in the Sacrament of Confession.
Do I Have to Forgive & Forget?
Have you ever heard the expression, ‘To err is human; to forgive, divine?’ Surprisingly this well-known phrase does not come from the Bible but a poem by the English poet Alexander Pope.
Today, Fr. Mike shares some great insights into the process of forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration and how God offers all three stages to us in the Sacrament of Confession.
Minute Meditation – Be Kind!
“If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation, and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness,…and God will guide you always, and give you relief in desert places” (Isaiah 58:9–11).
Isaiah tries to describe what a just people and country would look like if they fasted from the right things. He uses lovely words like light, guidance, abundance, renewed strength, watered gardens, repairers and restorers, nurturance, and delight, “a spring that never fails,” and even “riding on the heights of the earth.” But it all depends on fasting from unkindness and choosing justice. It is this very passage speaking of “repair and restoration” (tikkun) that our Jewish brothers and sisters use today as their call to social justice.
—from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Daily Meditation – Not Ruin, But Restoration
“So, if God has not resolved to cast His work back into nothingness forever, if this earth, sanctified by the footsteps of Christ, is destined, once radiant and renewed, to remain forever, then man must rise again in a future life to reconquer its scepter and kingship. Hence, once more, it follows that death means not ruin but restoration. If God has decreed that our earthly abode shall one day be dissolved, it is not for the purpose of despoiling us of it, but to render it subtle, immortal, serene. His aim may be compared to that of an architect, says St. John Chrysostom, who has the inhabitants leave his house for a short period, in order to have him return with greater glory to that same house, now rebuilt in greater splendor.”— Fr. Charles Arminjon, p. 84