Forgiveness is the new law that Jesus commands of us. No longer is it "eye for an eye". Jesus commands us to forgive & love our enemies (even though this may be difficult for us), because that is exactly what He did.

How can we possibly love our enemies? Left to ourselves it's not really possible. It is Jesus' grace within us - the grace that he won on the cross - that allows us to live beyond what is possible at the human level. Grace is the divine power within us. Grace allows us to do things that we are not otherwise capable of doing, like love our enemies.

Forgiveness is an act of the will. We can choose to forgive, even if we are still emotionally angry at the person who has hurt us. As long as we are unable to forgive, those evil acts committed against us still have power over us. It is forgiveness that empties evil of its power. Once we are able to forgive, the Lord's grace can begin to work within us to let go of the anger and replace it with mercy and love. But first, we must choose to forgive.

Practical ways we can allow God's grace to help us forgive:

- Receive the sanctifying grace of the sacraments through confession and the Eucharist.

- Acknowledge the hurt and the evil against us, and talk with the Lord openly and honestly about the anger we feel.

Make a list of the people whom we have a hard time forgiving. Write a letter to one of those people. Don’t deliver the letter, but rather, verbalize the words of the letter to a trusted person.

The Lord Makes a Covenant by Msgr. John Cihak

We focus on the brief but extremely powerful passage from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, which is our first reading for this weekend. It is taken from the seventeenth chapter of the prophet’s book, and the context is a fierce upbraiding that Jeremiah is giving for the idolatry of the people. What we have here is the pithy formula, the simple program, that ought to govern our spiritual lives at the most fundamental level.

There is a wonderful parallel between our first reading and the Gospel this week. The first reading is taken from the sixth chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, and it has to do with the call of Isaiah; and the Gospel is from the fifth chapter of Luke, and it deals with the call of the first disciples of Jesus. Both stories, in remarkably similar ways, lay out the essential dynamics of the spiritual life.

This week we hear from St. Paul’s brilliant meditation on love. Everything in religion and theology revolves around love. It is at the heart of everything. Nothing matters without love, because God is love. Putting love at the center is the best way to organize and prioritize our entire lives.

How can you best help build up the Kingdom of God?

The communion of humanity and divinity in Christ’s divine person can be likened to a marriage. Sin affects a kind of divorce between God and humanity, a break up of the marriage of God and his people. How wonderful, therefore, when the Messiah offers the first sign of his identity and mission at a wedding. This is an indication that the relationship between God and humanity will be transformed, reconciled, and renewed in Jesus Christ.

The first sacrament one can receive in the Church, Baptism, defines our relationship with Christ. In it, we are reborn as part of his Mystical Body and gifted with the grace of God’s love. Baptism lays the foundation for every other sacrament we are to receive and inextricably links us with the Trinity.

Our modern culture suggests a tension between spirituality and religion. But the Magi in today’s Gospel demonstrate that when spirituality is lifted up by revelation—when the Magi are told by the religious leaders where the Messiah is to be born—we find the object of our spiritual longing.