Your Weekly Reflection in Prayer

 

“Peter said, ‘how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’” Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.’” Matthew 18: 21-22 September 11, 2011 On this special day of remembrance, we ask your prayers for the victims of September 11, 2001, and their families. Dear John, No one said it is easy to reach out and extend forgiveness to one who has harmed or hurt me. But this is what we are called to do, and in so doing imitate the love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness of God. Our daily prayer - the Lord’s Prayer - is that God show his mercy to us, and that we in turn show that forgiveness (even seventy-seven times) to others. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We might think of one person we have been at odds with, and how we might rectify that relationship. Forgive them all, O Lord: our sins of omission and of commission; the sins of our youth and our riper years; the sins of our souls and of our bodies; our sins of ignorance and surprise; the sins we have striven to hide from others and the sins by which we have offended others. Forgive them, O Lord, forgive them all for His sake, who died for our sins and rose for our justification, and now stands at the right hand to make intercession for us, Christ our Lord. Amen. Rev. Peter Schineller, S.J., CMMB Board of Directors

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