April 2013
St. Mark’s News Volume 16/Issue 3
From the Rector On Sunday, March 17, Pope Francis delivered his first Sunday Angelus prayer and address from his papal apartment at the Vatican. The theme of his address was mercy and forgiveness. He told about meeting a very old woman at a religious festival while he was still archbishop of Buenos Aires. He asked her, “Grandmother, would you like to make your confession if you have sinned?” She said, “We all have sinned.” He then asked her, “What if he should not forgive you?” to which she replied, “The Lord forgives everything.” He then asked her how she knew this to be the case. She replied, “If the Lord had not forgiven all, then the world would not still be here.” Pope Francis used this conversation to illustrate his conviction that the Lord never tires of forgiving us. He said, “Let us not forget this word: God never tires of forgiving us, but we sometimes tire of asking Him to forgive us…. Let us never tire of asking God’s forgiveness.” Francis used as his text John 8:1-11: the woman caught in adultery. While Jesus was teaching in the Temple the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman who had been caught in adultery. They said, “’Teacher…in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they In this Issue heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the From the Rector ..................................... 1 elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing Vestry Highlights .................................... 2 before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, Looking Ahead ....................................... 3 where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, Outreach................................................. 3 ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Parish Life .............................................. 4 Christian Formation ................................ 6 Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’” Francis Parishioner Highlights............................. 8 said that mercy is the key point of the Gospel account: Birthdays & Anniversaries ...................... 9 “Mercy is the Lord’s most powerful message. It is not easy Caffeine Ministry ................................... 10 to trust oneself to the mercy of God, because God’s mercy ROTA ................................................... 11 is an unfathomable abyss – but we must do it. He had the ability to forget: he forgets our sins, he kisses you, he embraces you, and he says to you, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on, sin no more.’ We ask for the grace of never tiring of asking pardon, for he never tires of pardoning.” The old woman with whom Pope Francis spoke was correct – if the Lord had not forgiven all we would not be here. And that is precisely the message of this Easter season. Rather than stoning or destroying us on account of our sin, our Lord has forgiven and saved us. The message of Easter is that we have a God who never tires of forgiving us. The message of Easter is the message of mercy. God has the ability to
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