Forgiveness: Week 16 of Ordinary Time
Look: Bless Those, W. Hemmerling - Source
Listen: Prayer of St. Francis, Laura Mvula - Lyrics | Spotify | YouTube
Read: (Sunday) Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 116:1-9; Psalm 116:10-16; James 2:1-18; Mark 9:14-29
Readings for the rest of the week*: Genesis 32 - 33; Exodus 33:12-34:9; Psalm 103; Matthew 5:38-48; Matthew 18:21-35; Romans 12:14-21
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Sixteenth Week After Pentecost
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
Do: For this middle seven weeks of Ordinary Time, we’ll consider a cycle of God’s love that alternates between permission to love ourselves and the imperative to love our neighbor.
Bobby Gross introduces this week’s chapter: “This week, to hospitality, generosity, and justice we add a fourth imperative to the cycles of love for neighbor: forgiveness. How hard to forgive someone who has wronged us, who has hurt us, who obviously hates us! At the same time, how unbelievably good to be forgiven by someone we have deeply wronged. Of course, our motivation and ability to forgive others derives from the great forgiveness we have received from God through Christ. His grace to us is so great that we can even choose to love our enemies - as he did.”
As you bask in the forgiveness of God through Christ, ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your mind someone in your life that you might need to forgive for some wrong against you. Hold that person’s name in prayer and notice what emotions stir in you. Ask Jesus for the grace to release that person over to the care and correction of God. Consider asking a trusted friend or spiritual director to listen to your prayer of letting go of the person you need to forgive.
Related: Here’s a story about offering forgiveness that took me years of forgiving again and again: ‘Father, forgive them’
Here’s a poem I wrote during a season I needed to let a lot of people off the hook for the seventy-times seven kind of accumulated irritations and resentments: Becoming forgiven
“I’ve lost count the number I’ve recited this prayer.
Somewhere between my Catholic friends and the Baptists probably.
Regarding the others, how many times eyes rolled at the mention of the title:
”It should be called the Disciple’s Prayer, you know.”
I’ve lost count the number of times I thought I had no one
to forgive and I would be forgiven,
until the names roll off my tongue
leaving behind the vain repetition of the slightly-miffed,
the increasingly more annoying,
intentions were good and didn’t mean to hurt,
the little slight I barely noticed
and the one who overlooked.
The number of those unaware I hold them accountable
seventy times seven,
requires recitation three times daily, sometimes
four, to account for the repetitious Lord’s
praying these now-counted debtors off to graceland
with me, becoming forgiven.”
*During Ordinary Time this year, I’ll be sharing readings from the excellent devotional guide, Living the Christain Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross. While it’s not necessary to purchase the book to follow along with us, it’s an excellent resource we’ve dog-eared so often the pages are falling out of our copy!