He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.“ The others at table said to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said to the
woman “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
We all hate when we forget things…sometimes as quickly as walking from one room to the next, then pondering why it is we entered that room. A mind is a wondrous place that can remember the oldest, tiniest event, but in the present can forget the simplest intent to get something from the next room.
And how annoyed we get with ourselves!
But when is it a good thing to be forgetful? Jeremiah 31, we are told that “God will forget their evildoing and remember their sin no more”. God, in the presence of the penitent heart, will forget in that instant, the confessed sin. We are free in that very moment to walk away and start the next moments of our life with a clean heart…provided, of course, that our confession was true and sincere. If so, then that feeling of freedom comes from the certainty that God will no longer rebuke us for what we’ve done – because he just won’t remember!
It is a delightful paradox that the omniscient God can forget. On the one hand, He knows everything. He counts the stars and names each one. He numbers our comings and goings and keeps count of our tears. He marks the sparrow’s fall. He numbers the hairs of our head. And yet He forgets those sins that have been confessed and forsaken. If we repeat the same sin, because of our human weakness, God will not say to us, What? Again?” Instead, he will once more listen to our penitent heart and say, “Walk away, and sin no more, I’ve forgotten already”.
Alright, so we’ve had our sins not only forgiven but forgotten. We’ve accepted the gift for ourselves. But is it not a convention to share gifts? To give to someone else that which we have received? Yep! And therein lies the heart of the difficulty with the forgetting that goes hand in hand with the forgiving. If we find it easy to forgive, we will often find it nearly impossible to forget. Relationships can be restored, but fighting the temptation to continually bring up, mull over or let the past sin now forgiven cloud those relationships. And that includes our relationship with God.
We must believe that our sins will no longer be thrown in our faces by the God who loves us, therefore we may no longer throw back to those we love, the sins they have also had forgiven and forgotten by our loving God.
In reality, the forgetting is often the more difficult part of this relational love. In reality, we all continue to fail in our attempts to revive and sustain a relationship damaged by hurt. And this goes two ways…with those who have hurt us and with those whom we have hurt.
Jesus could read the heart of this weeping, repenting woman who recognized that her salvation was in Him, and she would follow him anywhere for the freedom and forgiveness she could feel in her heart. “…and I will remember their sin no more” and “Go in peace” have to be some of the most beautiful and comforting words from the heart of our God. Take them into your heart and “pay it forward!”
God Bless.
Jeanne Penoyar, an Accounts Manager here at Diocesan, is currently a Lector at St. Anthony of Padua parish in Grand Rapids, MI. While at St. Thomas the Apostle, Grand Rapids, Jeanne was a Lector, Cantor, Coordinator of Special Liturgies, Coordinator of lectors and, at one time, chair of the Liturgy Commission. In a past life, secretary/bookkeeper at the Basilica of St. Adalbert where she ran the RCIA program for the Steepletown parishes. And she loves to write! When relaxing, she likes reading and word puzzles. You can contact her at jpenoyar@diocesan.com.
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