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Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 10 March 2013


Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 10 March 2013

Shame and guilt can be devastating for all of us whether deserved or not, the effects can last for years and in some cases a lifetime, but normally we have to deal with the situation and in simple terms learn to live and cope with it! At some point though we all need that sense of release, that somehow we have been forgiven. I thought about that release when reading through today’s extract from the book of Joshua, what struck me was the way in which God’s forgiveness, the lifting of shame, can be a totally positive experience a new start, a way in to our promised land!

Christians can be guilty of forgetting that in Christ our shame has been lifted and as such forgiveness is available to us in many different ways. We often act and talk and write as though the sins of the world still weigh heavy on Christ, almost as though the crucifixion has to be gone through again and again and its all our fault! Yet Paul keeps on reminding us that in Christ a new creation is here, see how powerful are those few simple words of Paul’s, ‘God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself’, in other words God does not our faults against us.

Why can’t we keep that message foremost in our dealings with each other and our world and live as though we actually believe it? That’s what the good news is about. People just don’t want to keep hearing a negative message, they want to know that somebody can lift things off their backs or heal that deep inner hurt, that in the end as Julian of Norwich wrote, ‘All shall be well’. The gospel of the Merciful Father and the two sons reflects Gods unceasing love, reaching out to all manner of personalities and situations such as those exemplified by the two brothers. God welcomes sinners as that father does; finding us in our lost situations and bringing us home through all manner of things.

So what do we do? On this Sunday when we are called to rejoice and also celebrate those who have mothered us, perhaps as ambassadors for Christ, we can help lift that shame from others, be reconcilers, letting others hear the good news about God who is our Father and Mother, whose will is to bring us from death to life, to seek us when we are lost and bring us home.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.

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