Beloved Father, through the forgiveness You offer through Your Son Jesus Christ, how You lighten the burdens weighing on nations and individuals, if only they come to You!
How heavy are the burdens that people sometimes carry, to the point that they can hardly move freely! How crushing are the sins that have not been forgiven—how they mark a person’s being and bend them over, even seeking to enslave them forever! Even if they do not realize it or do not want to admit it, their vision is clouded and they hide from You, just as our first parents hid from Your gaze after they had sinned (cf. Gen 3:8).
But You, in truth, want to free them from this unbearable burden, and You make it easy for them, for You go out to meet them with Your forgiveness. You do not want to hold their sins against them, but to cast them behind You if only they return to You: “He will again have compassion upon us, he will tread our iniquities under foot. Thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” (Mic 7:19)
To Your holy servant Matilda of Magdeburg, You assured her: “I tell you that there is no sinner so evil that, if he truly repents, I will not forgive him all his sins at that very moment and incline My heart toward him with such grace and sweetness as if he had never failed.”
And later, the saint affirms: “When God looks at a soul with eyes of mercy and inclines toward it to forgive it, then all its transgressions are cast into eternal oblivion.”
Since You are like this and make it so easy for us, we too want to make it easy for those who have offended us, and we will not hold their faults against them. Let us keep our hearts open, even if our offender is not yet ready to ask for forgiveness. Let us pray for him, and may our hearts remain free of resentment. And if he does not come to us to be reconciled, we entrust him to You, for You are the just and merciful Judge.