Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Then Peter approaching asked him, ‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.'”

(MATTHEW 18:21-22)

The Gospels, as we know, reveal a God who is prodigal beyond all our standards and beyond our imagination. The God of the Gospels is the Sower who, because he has unlimited seeds, scatters those seeds everywhere without discrimination: on the road, in the ditches, in the thorn-bushes, in bad soil, and in good soil.

Moreover, that prodigal Sower is also the God of creation, that is, the God who has created and continues to create hundreds of billions of galaxies and billions of human beings. And this prodigal God gives us this perennial invitation: come to the waters, come without money, come without merit because God’s gift is as plentiful, available, and as free as the air we breathe. 

The Gospel of Luke recounts an incident where Peter, just after he had spent an entire night fishing and had caught nothing, is told to cast our his net one more time and, this time, Peter’s net catches so many fish that the weight of the catch threatens to sink two boats. Peter reacts by falling to his knees and confessing his sinfulness. But as the text makes clear, that’s not the proper reaction in the face of overabundance. Peter is wrongly fearful, in effect, wanting that overabundance to go away. Rather, Jesus wants him – in the face of too much – to go into the world and share with others that unimaginable grace” (24).