how can we be so...

Today is Tuesday within the Octave of Easter. Let me tell you a story.

I was a menopausal boy. As a child, I did not have the enjoyment of playing sports or engaging in athletics. I was alway sick. Quite often in school, my parents had to ask my teachers to excuse me from Physical Education exercises because I was always experiencing shortness of breath. I had my worst sickness when I was 14 years old. My mother could not understand why I was not responding to my usual medication. My father started to get worried, seeing my fingernails turning blue and my lips turning pale. I was hyperventilating. It seemed I was severely lacking oxygen. They rushed me to our family doctor.
At the clinic of Dr. Palma, I was pratically resisting the nurse attending to me in between my gasping for air. I became so melodramatic that I kept saying, "I am very tired, let me just die."
My mother held me by my cheeks, looked at me straight in the eye and said, "Do not say that my son, God loves you, I love you. If you wish, I am ready to take your place."
My mother was not able to take away my sickness. She was only able to give me a foretaste of the intensity of God's love for me.
I gave my cooperation to the doctor and nurse. I got well. My sickness left me as soon as I entered high school.

In the history of humanity, time also came when we were all gasping for air. We felt so sick and useless. We declared ourselves hopeless and beyond repair. We wanted to give up on life. Jesus came. Like my mother, He held us by our cheeks, looked straight into our eyes and said, "There is hope for you. The Father loves you. I love you. If you wish, I am ready to take your place."
And He really did. He took our place and carried all our sufferings. He assumed everything that is human except sin. Our sufferings He bore. Our punishments He took upon Himself so that we maybe freed from sin. He came to set us free. He came that all of us may live as free children of the Father in Heaven.

The forgiveness of God is not cheap. It is not easy to ask forgiveness from God. And yet, our experience tells us that forgiveness is really relatively easy to ask for from God. You can kneel inside the confessional, tell your sins to a priest who canot see you, be sorry, and BINGO! you are absolved.

Many indeed leave the confessional feeling confused and puzzled. Is it really that easy to get forgiveness?

No, it is not that easy. The fact is, somebody has been ahead of us to make that forgiveness "easy" to get, possible to receive from the Father. Jesus came to make life "easier" for us, so to speak.
He came to make His life an offering to the Father so that our sins may be forgiven. The forgiveness we are able to receive from the Father is on account of the sufferings of Christ for us. He willingly suffered for our sake. He shares the Father's wish to save all men and women from the darkness of sin.

Many of us, or all of us, are afraid to die because we are afraid to face God who is the final Judge. And we know that God is all knowing.

If we can hide our sins from confession, shield our illicit acts from the Supreme Court, I am dead certain we can never hide anything from God. He knows us down to the core of our beings. God is infinitely wise, and more than that, God is infinitely powerful. That is why we are afraid to face God who will judge us. What we sometimes forget, however, is that, in addition to being powerful and wise, God is also infinitely merciful. And this gives us no reason to be afraid. To come face to face with God can only mean pure joy!

We are very slow learners. We have already been forgiven a thousand times over, and yet we continue to be so ruthless. We can still be demanding, so unkind, so lacking in compassion when it comes to the sins other people commit against us.

God readily forgives us, yet we are so reluctant to forgive others in return, acting more godly than God.
How unfortunate this is! It is a pity that our human hearts can be less forgiving than God. Come to think of it, if you put together all the sins other people have inflicted on you, these would still not compare to the sins you have committed against God.

And if God can be so forgiving, how can we be so mean? How can we be so stubborn? How can we be so unkind? How can we keep so many grudges? How can we remain so angry after so many years? How can we remain so resentful all these years?

We will ask the Lord to make us forgiving. We will thank God that He is our Judge. If we were left to judge one another, we would get nowhere. But God is our judge, not our fellow men. Let us thank God for His mercy. Let us ask Him to make His mercy our own!....