They forgot the God who had saved them, who had done great deeds in Egypt. (Psalm 106:21)
In an interview with a father whose only son had been convicted of mass murder and sentenced to death, the father told of the deep love he had for his son. Nothing the son could do would make him stop loving him. He grieved over the enormous wrong his son had done. He said that he raised him with love and did not know what went wrong. As I read the article, I was struck by the father’s enduring love and how it contrasted with the son’s tragic forgetfulness of that love.
Love stays. It endures. It holds and remembers. Yet we can somehow wander far from love and in our waywardness do horrible things. God so loves us. In our waywardness, our forgetfulness, our petty and large acts of cruelty, God loves us, calls to us. I do not see how we can find our way to God and each other without asking God to be near us in love. In our waywardness, we can offer no more human a prayer than to ask God to help us remember how loved we are.
— Fr. James Stephen Behrens, OCSO
Exodus 32:7-14
Psalm 106:19-20, 21-22, 23
John 5:31-47
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