REPENT AND START AGAIN
Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48
Frederick Charrington, the Charrington Brewery owner, was walking down a street. Suddenly the door of a pub flew open. A man staggered out with a woman clinging to him and pleading: “The children haven’t eaten in two days! I’ve not eaten in a week! Please come home! Or… just give me a few coins so I can buy…” Her pleas were cut off as the man struck her.
As Charrington leaped forward to help her, he noticed a lighted sign on the pub: “Drink Charrington Ale.” He was stunned. He later wrote: “Here was the source of my wealth, and it was producing untold misery before my eyes. I pledged that not another penny of that money should come to me.”
Charrington spent the rest of his life striving to free people from alcoholism. He had the courage to repent and start again.
This is thrust of today’s readings!
In the first reading, Peter moves from castigating the Jews for putting to death “the author of life” to calling them to conversion: “Repent, therefore, and be converted.”
Peter uses a Jewish historical form: reviewing the past and moving through the present to the future. The aim is not to condemn but to draw his listeners to action, to a change of mind and heart.
Here, the medium is the message! Peter says: “You denied the Holy and Righteous One.” Peter, too, denied Jesus. But he repented and began again. It is never too late, no sin is too grave, for one to repent. Peter knows– as John writes in the second reading – that we have an advocate with the Father: Jesus, who is the expiation for our sins.
Repentance is Jesus’ message to his disciples. After giving them his peace, he commissions them to preach “repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” He calls them to proclaim his death and resurrection but also that through his death and resurrection, God has forgiven, accepts, and loves all people everywhere.
As human beings, we sin, we produce misery for others, we put people to “death”. The Lord calls us to have the courage to repent and to begin again. He is ready to forgive us; and it is then we will experience his peace. Let me start again…
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