Reflections from the Heart – March 30, 2025

Fourth Sunday of Lent
by Fr. Ivan Olmo

“God has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation.” Left to myself and given an honest reflection and a true assessment of myself, my skill sets, the things that I can truly claim as my own, I consider what can I truly do or accomplish on my own, left to myself with no assistance from God. What would I be able to create, build, transform, transcend, or serve by my own gifts, treasures or talents that I have won, gained or obtained on my own without any help or assistance from God or from anyone else? We need God to love, to breathe, to see, to think, to smell, to speak, to die, to live and to live forever. The first and only thought that arises is sin. I think to myself, I do not need God for that. However, in pondering further how I can and have the ability and the potential to sin, be tempted, cause hurt, distress and chaos, I ultimately realize, in a sense, I need God for that as well. For unless God created me out of nothing and in his own divine image and likeness and granted me the breath and gift of life and the grace and freedom of free will, I would not be able to sin, for I would not exist or have the freedom to do so. Crazy is it not? Yet sinning is in no way God’s fault although like Adam, we tend to accuse God for our bad mistakes and poor choices. Sin should not and could never be God’s fault or in any way attributed to God. Sin is a direct and intentional misuse of the powers, the abilities, the gifts and glories God has chosen to freely give and gift his beautiful chosen creation. God freely and lovingly has given us free choice and therefore the power to choose good over evil in all that we think, say and do. We need to choose freely not to sin or cause hurt, or cause others to stress or create any sort of chaos because we are created and recreated to avoid evil. We simply are created very good to be very good often and always. Since we can do nothing without God, we needed God to send Jesus to reconcile us to the Father and to one another and even needed Jesus to help us to forgive ourselves. God does not need us; however, gracious is he to permit us to help him to help ourselves.