Welcoming & Embracing the Stranger: Lenten Reflections with the Artwork of James Tissot |
February 27, 2026 - Friday of the First Week of Lent
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| “If You, O Lord, Mark Iniquities, Who Can Stand?”
One of my favorite “tricks” when doing any kind of public speaking – whether it be with students in the classroom or parishioners on Sundays – is to pose a rhetorical question. Inevitably, though, there’s always at least one person who will blurt out the very first thing that comes to mind and, to be honest, you never know what you’re going to get.
Rhetorical questions, though, are an important tool for getting people to think deeply. They’re invitations to go deep within our minds, our hearts, and our spirits – to wrestle with complex ideas. Although they don’t necessarily seek verbal answers, they aim to provoke profound and meaningful reflection.
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Today’s responsorial psalm presents us with a rhetorical question that calls us to think deeply about God’s mercy towards us and the mercy we must show to others. The psalm is written in the voice of someone crying out to God and begging for mercy. And the refrain poses a question – “if you, o Lord, mark our iniquities, who can stand?” – to which the obvious answer is no one. If God chose to mark every single sin, failure, and mistake we’ve ever made, we would have NO chance of standing. The following line, though, shows us the God in whom we trust and wait: “but with you is forgiveness.” Today’s psalm reminds us that we cannot earn our own redemption; redemption is freely given to us by the love of God. He shows infinite welcome and hospitality to us – welcomes us who have been estranged from Him by our sins – whenever we call upon Him.
For as beautiful as the psalm is today, it takes on even greater beauty when we think deeply about our relationships with others and how we, too, are called to welcome those who have been estranged from us by offering them forgiveness as an act of hospitality. And so, here’s a few more rhetorical questions to help us along our Lenten journey home to God: How do we respond when someone has sinned against us? To those who have been estranged from us? Do we welcome them home with mercy? Or do we keep a record of their failures and their shortcomings and their sins? Do we listen to their cries for forgiveness? Are our ears attentive to their voices in supplication? Do we show those who have deeply wronged us and who do not warrant forgiveness the same mercy and plenteous redemption God has shown to us? There’s no greater way of saying “welcome” than to say “you are forgiven” to someone who’s truly hurt us.
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Grant that your faithful, O Lord, we pray, may be so confirmed to the paschal observances, that the bodily discipline now solemnly begun may bear fruit in the souls of all. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. (Roman Missal)
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