One thing about getting old (or should I say experienced?) is you get to look back at all the young people you had a hand in educating. And now, with them as fully grown adults, you see individuals you never thought would make it to the top and succeed — with or without what the world calls necessary talents!
Success is obviously not the monopoly of the talented, the wise, the moneyed and the learned. I guess this is true about most everything in life, then as well as now. It was true during the times of the early Church, when Christians of Jewish extract would not know how to integrate with Christians who were not of Jewish descent. But as the telling lesson of Peter in the first reading shows us, salvation, repentance and justification were never to be the monopoly of a certain group of people. Being at peace with the God of all was never meant to be a closed issue for Gentile unbelievers (of the Jewish faith then). “God has granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles, too.”
It never occurred to me that repentance could be equated with life-giving. But that is precisely the point of the first reading. From the Biblical viewpoint, God, who raised Jesus from the dead, is seen and known as a God of life — a God of the living primarily, and of the dead. He has sent His Son “that we might have life, and have it to the full.”
A memory I can never forget as a child is the experience of being sick. I remember the sense of helplessness, the feeling that everything you eat tastes bitter and unpalatable, the impression that you are barely alive – that you are actually half-dead, like a walking zombie even before Michael Jackson popularized it.
And this is exactly what wallowing in sin is all about: being half-dead spiritually. But the good news of the Lord’s saving passion, death and resurrection is one of impartial and unconditional love, with only one condition: that we be open to God’s gift of life-giving repentance. Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB
Reflection Question:
How open am I to receiving and giving God’s unconditional love?
Lord of life, free me from my sins and let Your love flow through me.
St. Andrew Bobola, pray for us.
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