Think or make a mental list of the wrongs or sins that you consider unforgivable, unredeemable or outright convictable – if one commits these there is no second chance needed! No forgiveness! These may be for example: a breach of trust, infidelity, dishonesty, intolerance, abuse of any kind, murder, etc. People who do these things are ‘done’ in your mind.

The question for reflection this weekend is: How then does God react or deal with these ‘lost cases’, these people who have fallen out of grace in our eyes? – for what God does then sets the tone for all who claim to believe or to be disciples on how to treat/relate to these ‘lost causes’.

The answer to how God deals with the above is shocking/jaw dropping because for God, no one is beyond his grace. Nothing is too grave or too big for God to close one out of his love. In fact, to love means forgiving. The mission of God is to search out and to save. God is not so much interested in ‘our past’ but what we can be or become. Renewal and reconciliation are the DNA of God’s love.

The Wisdom reading we listen to speaks to the depth of God’s power and mercy.

But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things;
and you overlook people's sins that they may repent. (Wisdom 11, 23)


God loves all things that he has made and so he wills not to destroy any of them. For this reason, he spares even sinners and does not punish them to the extent they deserve. In his love even for sinners, God only punishes ‘little by little’ to give them the opportunity to repent. It is all about renewal and reconciliation.

Can then Israel or we learn to imitate God’s mercy and learn from it to hope that God would allow them to repent of their and our sins?

The story of Zacchaeus is very familiar and popularly known. We all can make a quick mental image of how all this played out. But there is more to Zacchaeus - he is a tax collector (take a moment to recall last Sunday’s gospel and the tax collector’ s prayer: ‘ O God have mercy on me a sinner’). Tax collectors are known to be unethical people, very corrupt people who took advantage of others to make themselves rich. In the crowd’s eyes, Zacchaeus is a traitor, unforgivable, a sinner.

Then Jesus does the unthinkable. He says: "Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." The crowd grumbles: "He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner." Jesus does not give in to this false pressure. He actually uses this moment as a teachable moment of God’s love. After Zacchaeus repents of his actions by his giving away of his possessions publicly, Jesus says:

"Today salvation has come to this house
because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.
For the Son of Man has come to seek
and to save what was lost."

The mission of Jesus is to search out and save what was lost. It is for this reason that one who understands and has experienced who God is and his great mercy plus the power to reverse things cannot but praise God as our responsorial psalm says: ‘I will praise your name forever, my king and my God’.

How often do we protest that we love our neighbor, yet we hesitate to forgive? How often do we profess our neighbor is created in God’s image, yet we are reluctant to be reconciled with our neighbor? How often do we acknowledge that our neighbor is a new creation, yet we refuse to say, ‘I pardon you’? Are our statements of love, just statements or are they actions? To love means to forgive.

Jesus sets the tone not only in the Gospel but at the Eucharist. Jesus’ self-giving demonstrates the price he paid for our sins (that sins may be forgiven). His love manifested in an overflow of self-giving. We too must do the same. The Christian must lead healing a broken world and this starts with learning to forgive.

Fr. Anthony Mpagi,
Pastor of Our Lady of Hope