The season of Lent is a time for visiting churches. Have you scheduled a visit to the confessional box where God’s reconciling mercy is waiting for you? - Daily Reflections March 9,2014

REVIVED, RECONCILED, REUNITED!

 

A man takes his pet to the veterinarian after a car ran over it. He lays the body on the exam table and the vet examines it, listening for the heart, and solemnly says, “I’m very sorry, Mr. dela Cruz, but I’m afraid your pet is dead.” Mr. dela Cruz, very distraught, exclaims, “How can you be sure? You haven’t done any tests or anything! I want to be sure!”

       So the vet leaves the room and then re-enters with a Labrador Retriever. He leads the dog to the table, and the dog sniffs up and down, then turns away. He then leaves with the dog and returns with a cat, and proceeds to wave the cat back and forth over the dead pet. No response. Again, he leaves the room. By this time the man has faced the fact that his pet is indeed dead.

       The vet returns and says once more how sorry he is, then he presents the owner with a bill for P50,000. Mr. dela Cruz protested, “Fifty thousand pesos just to tell me my pet is dead?” The vet replies, “Well, it would have been only P500 for the office call, but the lab work and cat scan were extra!”

       Whenever we sin, something in us dies. In the book of Genesis, Yahweh warned the first man and woman, “…you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17). John, in his epistles, warns, “If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death” (1 John 5:16). Mortal is Latin for mortis, or death. Sin kills the life of God in us. Sin compromises our life in the Spirit.

       What revives the life of God in our soul? With the sacrament of reconciliation, the break is healed and our integrity is restored and we are once again made whole. The season of Lent’s call for prayer, fasting and almsgiving attunes us to our inner life where the angelic and the animal in us live in harmony and integration. Be revived, reconciled and reunited with God! Fr. Joel Jason

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: The season of Lent is a time for visiting churches. Have you scheduled a visit to the confessional box where God’s reconciling mercy is waiting for you?

 

Lord, thank You for the sacrament of reconciliation. Thank You for always waiting for me there.