To Forgive, and to Seek Forgiveness

For Catholics, today's Gospel reading is the famous one about the Prodigal Son. If you think like me, most folks appear to concentrate on the obstinacy of the elder son in the story without much consideration of the actions of the errant sibling.

That's not all bad. There is a great lesson in forgiveness there, as the older son needed to accept and forgive his brother. It strikes me though that few people care to delve all that far into the importance of what the actual Prodigal did. And that was precisely that he admitted he was wrong and sought forgiveness.

The implications of that are strong and warrant attention. Would his father have been forgiving if the son had not sought forgiveness? Notice I am not speaking here about dad's willingness to forgive; we can safely assume he strongly wished to do that. But did he go to his youngest son and say he forgave him while the lad was actively involved in his debauchery? No. Did he go and forgive his son while the boy was still living his life of choice, even in tending pigs? No. Yet when the child came to his senses and accepted he had sinned, and came to beg forgiveness, his father forgave immediately. Quite literally on the spot in fact.

So it strikes me that part of the lesson is that God is willing to forgive, indeed will very readily forgive, if we ask. Yet if we consciously live in ways contrary to God's will, we will not seek forgiveness. In our arrogance and self importance, in the false knowledge that we are somehow right, we will not ask. Consequently, it seems, we should not then expect it.

There will be greater rejoicing, we are taught, over one repentant sinner entering Heaven than over a hundred of the righteous crossing through the Pearly Gates. That is very much to be expected. But notice that that former sinner, that now Glorious Soul, earned his glory through his humility. He earned his glory by recognizing he was not God.

Past History

One of me Grandpa Joe's favorite sayings was that things that had happened were 'past history'. While the phrase is certainly quaint, inherently repetitive, and obviously true, I believe he meant more to it than that. What he meant was that a lot of things simply need to be forgotten.

Not all things, of course. We need reminders at times in order to keep us honest and not commit the same mistakes over again. Even when our faults have been forgiven, memories should perhaps be kept in our souls that we might never forget the lessons learned from them. But on the whole, we need to let go of the past.

I don't think we do that enough in this day and age. When any affront, indeed even perceived affronts, are dredged up from our pasts solely to condemn us, we live in a dangerous time. For who of us does not have those skeletons in our closet? Who of us have not, at some point in our lives, said and done the wrong thing?  

Let's go out on a limb and say very few. So no matter how heinous the offense, maybe we ought to be forgiving of it, no matter how critical we may believe it is to our well being or the well being of the people around us. And I believe we need to start asking and answering honestly, how many such charges are valid and how many are, if you will forgive what I promise is not meant as a joke or commentary on more recent history, trumped up? 

Without a strong and pervasive reason to rekindle the flames of sin and error, why don't we just let the embers cool? Why don't we let past history stay in the past?