Year A
Ephesians 4:7-16
Psalm 122:1-2.3-4ab.4cd-5 (R. see 1)
Luke 13:1-9
TRUE REPENTANCE
It is the Holy Spirit who inspires true repentance. If contrition is needed for a true repentance, and contrition as from Latin contritus, means "worn out," or "ground to pieces" is been crushed in spirit by a sense of sin, then nothing can really crush our spirit together if not the Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 57:15
"for thus says the High and Exalted One who lives eternally and whose name is holy, 'I live in the holy heights but I am with the contrite and humble, to revive the spirit of the humble, to revive the heart of the contrite."
For our spirits to be crushed, humility is required. Admitting that we are but creatures and not perfect or we cannot reach perfection without the help of God is the first step of surrendering our spirit to be crushed by the Holy Spirit and be revived again.
In the gospel today, the stress on repentance while in the first reading the stress is on the Holy Spirit grooming us to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The Holy Spirit is at work in the world and in us, we only have to allow the Holy Spirit to do his work in us, fill our every being. .
Jesus Christ left us with the Holy Spirit who as the third person of the Holy Trinity is God and just as Jesus Christ is God who can fill all things and as we heard from today's first reading that "Jesus descended into the lower parts of the earth, and he [Jesus Christ] who descended is he who also ascended far above the heavens, so that he might fill all things, the Holy Spirit can fill our all, and crush our spirit to inspire true and sincere repentance were with the help of the Holy Spirit we can truly resolve to not sin again.
Pope Francis"Yet only when we come to understand, in the light of the Cross, the evil we are capable of, and have even been a part of, can we experience true remorse and true repentance."
Just look at the picture of the Cross for a while, through the Cross Jesus Christ went to the lowest part of earth in the Jewish sense, "Shoel." He died and conquered death by his resurrection to make death our friend rather than our foe so that we can die to our sins and be resurrected to newness of life.
Look at the Cross of Christ Jesus and let your heart be stirred up by the fact that it was for our sins that he came to hang on it. Let our whole being be broken and repent from our sins as we gaze on the Cross. Been broken and surrendering to God is the only sacrifice God requires of us sinners.
Psalm 51:17"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."
God always seeks us to return to him, he is always searching for us to come back to him, this is the only sacrifice he requires of us to give away our slavery to death in exchange of freedom from life.
By Sylvester Amakye-Quayson
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