FATHER,  FORGIVE ME,

FOR I DON’T KNOW

WHAT I’M DOING!

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever hurt someone that you didn’t know you hurt them and then you found out about it a long time afterwards?

The title of my homily is, “Father, Forgive Me, For I Don’t Know What I’m Doing!”

EXAMPLES

For example, it might have been a comment we made that the other heard as a reject slip. Or it might have been something we were doing that drove the other person crazy, the way we drive, or the way we clear our throat - and we never knew it bothered them.

Just listen to people. We’re always talking about others and often it’s about how they are driving us nuts. Well, there has to be someone out there who is complaining about us and we don’t know it.

TODAY’S FIRST READING

In today’s first reading from Paul to Timothy, he says, “I was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man filled with arrogance but because I did not know what I was doing in my unbelief, I have been treated mercifully, and the grace of our Lord has been granted me in overflowing measure, along with the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.

Isn’t that so powerful?

We all have “used to’s”. We all used to do this and do that.

Hopefully - if what we used to do - bothered others - we have changed.

Hopefully, as we age - there will be a lot more insights - about bothersome behaviors.

Isn’t Paul’s message of God’s overflowing compassion to Timothy so moving?  It fits in with yesterday’s gospel about compassion overflowing into our lap  -- if we are compassionate.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel indicates that we can be so blind. We can forget these great truths.

Today’s gospel has the famous saying about seeing specks in our brother’s eye and missing the plank in our own.

Jesus knows people. We don’t want to smell our own stink, so we smell other’s. We don’t want to hear about out selfishness, so we block that out, by using our energy in spotting it in others.

CONCLUSION

The day we admit our blindness, the day we are as honest as Paul, can be the day we experience God’s compassion to us, a compassion we can then share as we can forgive each other. Amen.