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to be great saints.</i> <i>Don't miss the opportunity!</i> Hello, family, and welcome to another episode of Mother Angelica Live Classics. Mother's going to talk about "Regret, Remorse and Sorrow". You know, remorse is a growing distress arising from a sense of guilt of past wrongs. You know, when I was doing my prison work, I met a man who--well, he just got drunk, to make it simple. And he was angry that the baby began to cry that night when he was sleeping. He got up, hit the child on the head with a hammer and killed the child. Now, his regret, the sorrow and the pain, were with that man all his life. He never could forgive himself. And we can understand why. That's a terrible thing to do. But you see, we need to be sorry for what we do. He was sorry, but he wouldn't let go. Didn't know Jesus, didn't know about the Lord. He just suffered all his life over this terrible guilt. Pray, when something goes wrong. And no matter how serious something can be, God can forgive you, will forgive you. You need to forgive yourself, and to pray-- because God loves you very, very much. (applause) Mother: Well, good evening, family. Today is family night, as you know, and we're going to talk about some things that, that afflict all mankind at some time or another in their life, and I think we need to kind of face some of these things and I can give you something about them in Scripture. If you've ever done anything wrong in your life, the first thing you usually do is regret. Well, I regret this doesn't have much ink in it. So the first thing we do is regret what we did. Now, there are times after we regret something that we have remorse, and this remorse can be deadly. There are other times we have a sorrow in our heart, and this sorrow can be deadly and it can be fruitful. All of these can be stepping stones to great virtue and the fruits of the spirit or they can get you all the way down into despair. Now, I want to read something for you from the Gospel which gives us an excellent example of how two different people handle basically close to the same sin. So we have here Peter. And after they seized Jesus, Peter kind of, you know, the poor man, he, he tried to defend Jesus. He took out his sword, but he hit--he missed the man, you know and he just cut off his ear, and our Lord healed that ear. Well, by that time Peter became very frightened and he ran. And that's usually the beginning of something-- a deep, a deep sin or a grievous sin. Sometimes we do things because we're afraid and we run and then in that effort we begin fear makes us fall. So he's there in the courtyard and they had lit a fire and the maidservants and the other servants lit this fire and Peter sat down among them. That was his first mistake. Here we're going to see the role of regret, remorse and sorrow--forgiveness, which we'll come to later. We're also going to see how we put ourselves in occasions of sin. See, we always think we can handle it. "I can handle that." Well, here's Peter now. You're going to, a tremendous lesson in human nature and you and I have done the same thing as Peter has done. There's no way you can get away and say, "Well, I would never do that." Yeah, you've done it; I've done it. And it says, he was sitting there by the blaze and a servant girl saw him and peered at him. You know why it says peered at him? You know what that means? It means I'm going to go around saying, "Oh, you are one of them," By that term, "peer" means you kind of examine somebody from their feet to their head. Well, in the process of going up and coming down again, he is scared to death. Now, if he had been smart he would say, "Excuse me. "My mother-in-law's calling me" or, you know, "Somebody needs me. I have an appointment," and get out of there. No, he just sits there. And she said, "This person's been with him!" And he denied it. He said, "I don't know Him." Wow! See, fear makes you do things you don't want to do and you know you shouldn't have. And then somebody else comes along and then look at him see, look at him up and down and maybe stroking their beard a little bit and saying, "Hum, you are one of them." And Peter said, "I'm not, my friend." So he was calling somebody a friend, he never saw in his life. An hour later--now, this is a long time. Don't you think you'd get out of this situation like that? Don't you thing by this time you'd say, "I've gotta get out of here! "I'm going to fall flat on my face!" Haven't you been in that situation when you knew you should get out of that place, you should get out of that situation before you fall flat? What do you do? You stay another hour. You stay another hour! That's exactly what Peter did. It said here, "An hour later." "Another man came along and said, 'This man was certainly with Him. Why, he's a Galilean. His speech betrays you." If I went up north and I walked in and I said to them, (Southern drawl) "Ah don know this man. (audience chuckles) "Ah nevah sah 'em in mah lahf!" What would you think they'd say to me? What would you think they'd say? "Hey, come on, you're from the south! "There's no way you can pull the wool over our eyes!" So he said, "You're a Galilean!" which was not the best kind of Aramaic or Arabic. "My friend"--see, he wants to be friends with these people. You know, we don't say, my enemy, or he doesn't say anything. He says, "My friend." He is trying to; to put himself into this little group he knows he doesn't belong to. "My friend, I do not know what you're talking about." Now, without, you know, any excusing--because we're all in the same boat as Peter-- he lied. He lied. You know, sometimes in the Old Testament and we find people who don't tell the truth, they excuse it, "Well, he meant this," see. Well, he may have meant whatever he meant but a lie is a lie! And here now, Peter lied three times. He denied that he knew. The lie was a denial. Now, this is what's so heartrending. "While he was speaking, the cock crowed and the Lord passed by." Can you imagine that? Here is Peter among his "friends" and he's been swearing and he's been acting like they do and fear kind of takes hold of him and Jesus, Jesus passes by and looks at Peter. He looks at him with such a loving, compassionate, forgiving love. And it says, "He looked straight at Peter and Peter remembered what the Lord said." And what did the Lord say? Well, here in Luke it says, "Right before this happened the Lord said, 'Simon, Simon, satan, you must know, has got his wish to sift you all like wheat. "'But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail and once you have recovered, you in turn must strengthen your brothers." and that's when Peter says, "Nah! Nah, not me. "I'm ready to go to prison with You." And he said, "Peter, before the crock crows today you will have denied Me three times." Now, you see the difference between the heart and the love of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, and ours. In that look of Jesus there was not a condemnation. It was an act of, a look of tremendous, compassionate love, and that brought about in Peter great sorrow because it says, "He went out and wept bitterly, bitterly." Now, we're going to look at the difference between Peter and Judas. Peter had deep sorrow. He admitted his sin. That's an H and that's an I, anyway. He admitted his sin! What Judas did was become first regretful, then he turned into remorse and this is why he committed suicide. He hung himself. He hung himself. He admitted his sin. When I am regretful, it is a kind of sorrow. But it isn't a sorrow because I offended someone; it's a sorrow because I did something wrong. So I regret. I regret and you regret many thing but you don't regret because something turned out bad, you regret because you were so stupid to make it turn out bad! "If I hadn't done that, this wouldn't have happened." That's regret. Now, Peter could have said the same thing. He could have said, "Why did I stay in that stupid circle warming myself? "I should have got out of there the first question." He didn't have regret. He wept bitterly because he was sorrowful. He admitted his sin. Sometimes when we regret, our admission leads to remorse. What is remorse? It is a lack of hope, a lack of hope. Let's see if I can think of an example. (heavy sigh) Say I did something and I regret it, meaning, "I'm sorry. "That was a stupid act to make." At that point we're ok. Regret came with the sorrow, the right kind. But if I begin to live in this regret and it never leaves my mind, if it doesn't turn to tearful sorrow--not because I have done something wrong but because I have offended An All-holy God or I have offended a dear friend or I have offended the community or I have offended the nation by scandal. See, the whole thing comes, in not so much in what, I did but what I have done to other people. Now, remorse, again, is the whole, the whole aspect of regret and remorse is on self, on self. Regret says, "I was so stupid! "I sold this business and two weeks later it increased a million-fold, you dummy." But if you were to say, "I made a mistake here but maybe that wouldn't have been good for me. "I thought about it. "Lord, help me to be discerning in the future. "But I thank You that maybe that million dollars would have made me go astray." If I didn't do that--and believe me, nobody has offered me a million dollars, so don't get exited --if I don't do that, what am I going to say? I'm going to concentrate on regret. I missed an opportunity. I missed an investment or I missed, I had this opportunity to expose my singing talent or my musical talents and I could've won that prize and I didn't win that prize and why didn't I win it? And how come I didn't, how come I didn't discern? And that pattern, that goes on and on and on and on. It becomes a broken record. At that point or some point, remorse comes in, remorse. I begin to lie in my own mud puddle, my own mud puddle. I've given this example before but I think it's a good example because it will maybe make us understand that our human nature tends to regret and remorse. It takes a spiritual nature to become sorrowful and repentant-- and repentant. This does not bring repentance--regret nor remorse brings repentance. It is only a deep sorrow of being so wrong about something, making the wrong decision, being so stupid; making a mistake and that closes you in like a turtle. So you don't ask for forgiveness because you think, "How can I be forgiven? "How can anybody be forgiven, make such a stupid mistake?" And that's why Judas hung himself and Peter was sorrowful. Peter was sorrowful and this is Judas up here. He regretted. He went to the temple and he threw the 30 pieces of silver and he said, "I have betrayed an innocent man." They said, "Hey, that's your problem. "Well, what do we have to do with that?" Now, when you talk about hypocrisy and lies, that's what you're talking about. What does she mean? They're the ones that got into it; they're the ones that asked him to find Jesus; they're the ones that asked him to betray Jesus; they're the ones who offered him 30 pieces of silver. Then they had the audacity to remove themselves from their responsibility and say, "Look, we can't touch that money. "It's unclean! "Let's buy a hill up here and bury all the poor people, all the indigents, all the lepers." We have to distinguish--see, sorrow and regret look alike but they're not. In Judas it was regret. How do we know the sign? "I have betrayed an innocent man." He knew, he regretted an action, an action and then he became remorseful. He became centered in himself because he wouldn't have been able to face Jesus. He wouldn't have been able to face the Apostles. He couldn't get away from himself. He couldn't get away from his miserable self. But "Peter wept bitterly and was repentant." "I'm sorry, Lord. "I should have listened to You but I didn't." And we know that sorrow because Peter was one of the first that Jesus appeared to, one of the first. And the Sea of Tiberius when they were out there fishing, He called Peter after they had their breakfast on the seashore and He said to Peter, "Do you love Me more than these?" That was His act of pride. Peter said, "Look, all these are going to betray You, not me" which means he loved Him more than these. And Peter got a little uneasy. See, he's catching on. And he said, "Yes, I love You." No more bravado. Sorrow made him dependent; sorrow made him dependent on God. He knew he could no longer make these bravado kinds of statements. He would say, "I love You, Lord." And so, the Lord said, "Well, feed My sheep." And He said, "Peter, do you love Me more than these?" "Lord, You know I love You." "Feed My lambs. Peter, do you love Me more than these?" "Lord!" At this time you see, his sorrow and dependence upon God are getting kind of desperate and he said, "Lord, you know all things. You know I love You." Now, a grace was offered both to Judas and to Peter, see. Peter was impulsive and impetuous. He never lost faith in Jesus. I say, "Lord, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Most High God." And Jesus said, "Men, flesh had not revealed this to thee but My Father in Heaven has revealed this to you." So he never lost faith or trust in Jesus, even after such a terrible sin. And so, he could ask for forgiveness and receive forgiveness. Judas did not ask. He took his own life in his own hands. He hung himself, which was despair and remorse. And so Judas went into himself. He didn't have much faith in Jesus or he would've never denied Him, never denied Him. So at the very beginning, way back, somewhere way back --and some exegetes think that when Jesus revealed the doctrine of the Eucharist, Judas said, "This is enough. He is not going to be the Messiah, the Deliverer, the military leader we want. "He's got to go. "He's going to change these people's minds. "He's going to make them loving and kind and forgiving. "That isn't what we want. "We want to be delivered from the tyranny of Rome." Well, you see, so he didn't have any kind of faith. Somewhere along the lines in those three years, he began to waver, to steal. When he found fault with Mary Magdalene and he says, "Look, these 300 denarii..." Do you know what 300 denarii is? A whole year's wages! Oh, that's some kind of expensive perfume, huh? Is there any kind of perfume that you know that costs $10-$15,000? No? You don't own any kind of perfume like that? You're not in the right strata, you see, of.... Well, it's a lot of perfume, and this man we incensed! He said, "Hey, you know, we could have given this to the poor!" But the Scripture said he was a liar and a thief. He wasn't interested in the poor, only in himself. So you look at Judas, he was totally self--I need an L in here--self, all self. Everything was self. This man was impetuous, he made a mistake but he loved Jesus, he loved Jesus. Well, from real sorrow that comes from having offended someone else, not from what you particularly did, brings repentance--meaning, "I'm very sorry, Lord." Repentance doesn't mean only sorrow. You can be sorry for everything and never say, "Please forgive me." See, this has to go, "Please forgive me." "Please forgive me." Judas never asked forgiveness. He was regretful of an act; he became remorseful and he killed himself. Peter was sorrowful; he admitted his sin; he said, "I'm sorry, Lord;" he wept bitterly; he became very dependent--no longer self-oriented, no longer independent, no longer self-sufficient. He knew, "Lord, You know I love You." He never lost faith or trust. Now, that's the negative of everything, huh. Now, when we talk about the seven gifts of the Spirit--we learned about--a little angel erased all this because I didn't want you to look at it again. We're going to something different now. But when we are conscious of our faults and weaknesses-- and no matter how grievous they may be, you know, we may have all seven capital sins. However, it's very possible, you know, that I just have one, and it's what we call predominant. But I have to know both Judas and Peter had a predominant fault and both fell under this predominant faults. What does that mean? The one that makes you fall the most. And one for Peter was he was impetuous but so was Judas. He waited three years for Jesus to be the kind of Messiah he wanted, and he had it! No more! So both were impetuous, both were tired of something, both were afraid; but reactions were totally different. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that's very important is not only the gift to be forgiven, but the gift to forgive and accept both repentance and sorrow. For example, have you ever had--it's a terrible thing --that you go to someone and they won't forgive? They say, "Look, just get out of my sight. "I don't want to see you anymore." And you've humbled yourself enough to say, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do this." Did you ever have that happen to you? There is nothing worse in this whole wide world, nothing. So I have to be able to forgive. I have to be able to accept somebody else's repentance. If you say to me, "I'm sorry," I have to be able to accept that and say, "It's okay. Let's go on from here, let's just forget, forget whatever happened." That's a gift of the Holy Spirit. It's a gift to forgive, the gift to forgive. Well, come on here. It's the gift to forgive and to accept the repentance of my neighbor. Now, to keep myself from going into remorse, see, regret is, meaning I'm sorry I did that, it's a beginning but if I don't get the self out of it, then I go into remorse. And so a great gift of the Holy Spirit that we need to ask for is endurance, endurance. And I need endurance to be able to put up with myself and the faults of my neighbors. How many people get so disgusted with somebody's faults? They either leave, they get a divorce, or they get so upset over their own faults and weaknesses they go into despair. I need endurance; I need perseverance. I need to know that I am a frail, weak human being. And because I am frail and weak, I have a tendency to do what Peter did, even maybe what Judas did. But if I have another gift of the Spirit, love and hope my love will make me repentant and run to Jesus. Regret and remorse makes you run away from Jesus. See, one makes you run to, the other makes you run from. And that's the essence of Hell. All the people in Hell are regretful and regret and remorse but no sorrow, no repentance. And the Lord God Himself came down and said, "Will you repent? "Will you love Me as Lord of All in My Incarnation?" They would say, "No!" You see, there's no repentance, there's no admission that I have-- there's no love and no hope. In Hell there is no hope. In Judas there was no hope; in Peter there was hope; in Judas, no faith, in Peter there was faith. Weakness, a lot of weakness in Peter, but his faith didn't fail. It's a wonder, he denied the Lord, his faith failed. What he denied, see, was from fear. And one look from Jesus, one thought of Jesus changed the whole picture, the whole picture. So, one of the great gifts of the Spirit; and with hope comes joy. One of the greatest things you can do for Jesus, the greatest ways you can glorify Him is if after you have sinned and you said you're sorry and you accept his forgiveness, that you have joy. See, no remorse--remorse takes away joy. It means it just goes on and on and on and on and on. See, if I have regret without sorrow, then I'll go to remorse because sorrow is a heart thing, regret is a head thing. See, say for example you cheat on your taxes--nobody here would cheat on our taxes, you know. But you're sorry. You kind of gave into your human nature. But you maybe don't regret it until the IRS comes along. See, they're the great, let's see, what is it? What's the word I'm looking for? They kind of quicken your conscience a little bit, see. All of a sudden they decide, "Oh, let's look at this little guy here and see what he's doing." And now what happens? See, if we're Christian we say, "Yeah, I'm sorry, I did that." If not, if you're going to regret and remorse, you're going to lie. So lying, one sin follows another. Now, once you ask forgiveness, you do accept the circumstances, things don't change. You see, if your son is 16 years old and he just gets a driver license and you just bought a brand new car and he wraps it around a tree. Now, he can say he's sorry. Does it straighten out the car? See, does he look at that car, this one big piece of junk now, and he says, "I'm sorry," and some magic thing happens and goes "woo"? No! He's got to make what? Restitution. He may get himself a job and have to work for three years and pay his father back. He just can't walk away and say, "Well, I'm sorry about that, Dad. Let the insurance cover it." How would you feel? So we have to understand that when I ask for forgiveness, I have to accept the responsibility of my mistake. Peter did! I don't think Peter ever forgot he denied the Lord but it was always a source of joy to him because he was the recipient of tremendous love, fantastic hope and joy! "Do you love Me more than these?" You know, sometimes we can use the love and compassion of our fathers to make us forget what we did. That's what the Father said. The Father, Eternal Father sent Jesus to make restitution for us. Huh? Didn't He, He died once for all. Why? For all our sins. But I still have to make reparation and take the consequences of my mistakes. But you see, the gift of the Holy Spirit, love and hope, makes me know I can depend upon the Lord's strength in the future, I can depend upon His forgiveness, I can depend upon His mercy as long as I say, "I'm sorry." But it takes the gift of the Holy Spirit to do that. I need also peace. Forgiveness, sorrow that comes from my heart, that makes me say to God or my neighbor, "I'm sorry," brings you peace. Those of you that are Catholic and have gone to Confession with quite a load have experienced a joy that no other thing would give you. There is something about hearing, "I absolve you from all your sins." Why? In his own name? No, "In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." So I know for sure I am forgiven. There's nothing--and those of you who are not Catholic and don't have that particular Sacrament-- there's nothing like kneeling down in your living room or even sitting in your car and with a sorrowful heart say, "Lord, I am deeply sorry and I'll try very hard never to do that again. "Forgive me!" Then the Spirit comes along with hope and joy and peace, peace. You have to look at, if you want to look at something in Scripture look at St. Paul. St. Paul ran after Christians. We don't always look at that. He dragged them into prison --women, children and men-- dragged them out of their homes, dragged them from places they were hiding and put them in jail, had them flogged, perhaps took away their possessions. That's pretty tough stuff, you know. Did he ever forget it? No. Was he regretful? No. He said, "Even though I was a persecutor of the Church of Christ, even though I did all of these terrible things, the Lord has forgiven me," and that gave him hope, he gave other people hope, it gave him joy, it gave him peace. He did not regret what he did cause he did it with sincerity as a faithful Jew, a Pharisee. Now, if I commit a grievous sin and I know ahead of time it's a grievous sin I may regret what I did but that regret must lead to repentance. It must lead to repentance because repentance and sorrow are also gifts of the Spirit. I need a grace from God. Regret is a kind of positive/negative. It's a beginning of something great or a beginning of something evil. It's a beginning of a total dependence upon God; it's a beginning of being forgiven and experiencing His love and His mercy and His joy or it can be the beginning of guilt, beginning of remorse and despair. There is a point in regret, meaning "I'm sorry I did this,"--that it either turns inward or upward. At that point--this is what you need to be careful-- where is your regret? Where is your sorrow, now? One turns to sorrow and leads love and joy and peace and compassion for your neighbor. If you have failed miserably, how can you possibly be impatient with your neighbor? Isn't that what the Lord said? "Take the beam"--do you know what a beam is? There are no beams in here. If you're up in St. Michael's Hall, why don't you go there today and just look in St. Michael's Hall, there, my friends, is a beam, lots of beams. That's what you've got to take out of your eye before you take a splinter. Now, if I had a splinter and I put it next to the beam. Do you know what a splinter is? I don't even have any here to describe a splinter. Let's take this ribbon and divide it in half. I'm not doing too hot about that. Okay, you see that little thing. I want you to go up there and think of this and look at that beam. The beam is you. This is the beam in your neighbor and it is a gift from God. It is a gift from God. Some people never go through the regret stage because they're so filled with faith, so filled with hope. And if they fall out of weakness or whatever, they turn immediately to God. There's no regret necessary. They have an inner awareness. Just like if you love someone deeply, you don't have to analyze it; you know right away you hurt them. Do you know? Have you ever had that experience? Their face or something, you say, "Why did I say that? I'm going to bite my tongue next time" and you didn't mean it when it was coming out either, but you knew immediately somebody got hurt. Now, if you just say, "Ooh, why'd I do that, and oh...?" All right, before we go to questions I'm going to give you a little example I've given before but most of you haven't heard it. I want you to imagine here a great big mud puddle. You got it? You got in your mind a big mud puddle now? And here are three people are going to go past this mud puddle. Okay, here comes an evil man, one who enjoys evil and he's walking there and he slips in this mud muddle and he loves it, he loves it! He keeps putting mud all over him and he just keeps sitting there and he loves that mud puddle. That's an evil person who loves evil, loves darkness, loves sin. Here comes a good person. A good person comes and he falls in this mud puddle and he gets up. He sits there a little bit, though. He says, "Oh, why'd I come this way? "Somebody told me this mud puddle was here. Why'd I do it?" He kept sitting. "Oh God, you know, this is terrible. I'm wasting all this time." He just keeps sitting there. "I don't know why I did this. "It's just so stupid of me to do this after I've been warned. "You'd think I'd have enough to..." Still sitting there! Finally, he says, "Well, I better get up. "This is ridiculous, me sitting here." So he does get out of the mud puddle and he starts walking around and sometimes he says, "Oh, look at me, "I'm all full of mud. "What's my wife going to say when I get home? "What are the people around me going to say? "Lord, you know, what am I going to do?" Now, he's up, isn't he? He's out of the mud puddle. He's sorry he got in that mud puddle but he's got, he says, "Oh my, what am I going to do?" Now, here's comes another saintly person, we could call a good Christian--all good Christians are saints. And he comes along and down he goes. And he said, "Woo!" gets up like that. He says, "Sorry, Lord. "I'll watch it next time. Please forgive me." Goes on, never thinks of his little dirty clothes, never thinks of what people are going say, nothing at all. He just keeps praising the Lord. He says, "Lord, I know You love me and Your love is always faithful." Now, you got a little example of everything I spoke about tonight and I'm going to ask for questions. You got a question? You have. Dennis: We heard a lot of the symptoms of Judas and Peter. What was the chief difference and what was really lacking in Judas that made the difference in Peter? Mother: Faith. Faith. The very fact that Judas betrayed Our Lord, he lost faith that He was Lord Messiah. And when He lost faith there was nothing about this Man that he respected, that he loved or could admire. So all he could do, "I've got to get rid of Him. "He's of no use to me. "He's no use to my cause. "He's not going to deliver us." You see, he went from this level--where he probably was when he went to follow Jesus--down. What brought him in there? Probably the things the Lord said He didn't like--his temptation to take from the purse. You see, if he loved Jesus, then he would have terribly, he would have sorrow the first time he stole something. Do you understand? His conscience would have been quickened. But with the lack of faith and the lack of hope, what was he going to be sorry for? There was some money; he could use it. What is it? Do you understand? Now, Peter had a lot of faith but he was a weak man, impetuous man. We know that all the time when he says, when the tax collector came along and he said, "Do you, Master, pay taxes?" He said, "Sure! (Mother chuckles) No problem!" And then when he walked in the door, the Lord said, "Peter, who pays the taxes, the Son or the servants?" He was embarrassed by that time. He opened his mouth and he has both feet in it. There was also another aspect of the difference was love. Judas loved himself more than he loved Jesus. See, there was that aspect of love--another of what we would call, these are the things he lacked. Now, if we want to go to the reason he lacked these things, it was pride, see. Pride did not allow him to accept the mystery that Jesus was giving us about Himself, the Father, the Spirit. He did not accept that. And there it goes again with faith, doesn't it? See, pride omits any element of faith because faith is that special gift that allows me to see the invisible reality. Well, if he lacked faith, then he could not see the invisible reality. That's faith. So he lost hope. "This Man's not going to do what I want Him to do. "He's talking about love and forgiveness and loving your enemies!" Then he lost love. Now, when he lost faith and hope and he lost, this man was expendable now. There's no chance for sorrow at that point. What would you be sorry for? See, all you're doing is getting rid of somebody who is absolutely unnecessary, in fact, a hindrance. What made the Pharisees want to get rid of Jesus after He raised Lazarus from the dead? Wouldn't you think that would be the clincher? I mean, this guy is dead four days! (Mother chuckles) Even his sister said, "Lord, You can't open that tomb. He stinks!" And the Lord said, "No, no, open that tomb. Pull back that stone." Would that have convinced you that this man was very different? It would? What would your reaction be if you saw this man dead four days, is all wrapped up in this swaddling bands or whatever they called it and he's walking out like that, you know. And the Lord said, "Unloose him." And there they are, all these things are unwinding, you know and here's this dead man, dead four days and he's bright as a star. Would you faint, or what? Man #1: Probably. Mother: You'd probably faint. After you woke up, (audience chuckles) you see, from your dead faint would you believe in Him? Man #1: Um hum. Mother: You would? Man #1: I would think so. Mother: You would think so. Well, it didn't happen. It made them furious! And what did they say, "We have to get rid of Him now, right now!" Oh, do you see what pride does? It blinds you. So Judas had tremendous pride. He probably started with this pride by looking down at the Apostles. They were Galileans and he was a Judean, upper class you know, smart. "These are ignorant laymen" --that's what the accent-- fishermen--they weren't too hot at their trade, either. He was the Scribe. Oh well, you see, at that point he began to think of himself as something greater than he was. Peter was impetuous but it was Peter who said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Then today as we go along in our life, in our minute-to-minute, moment-to-moment existence, we must be aware that our human frailties can give glory to God. Have you ever thought that if Judas would have ran to the bottom of the cross and hugged the bottom of the cross and let the Precious Blood fall upon him and the Lord said, "I forgive you." Can you imagine what a tremendous amount of faith that would increase in you? Would you ever despair of forgiveness from God if you could see that man running to the cross and saying, "Lord, I'm sorry!" and see the power of God's compassion and mercy fall upon him? Wouldn't it have been wonderful if we could have said "St. Judas, the man who betrayed His Lord and was forgiven"? So Judas, in becoming regretful, remorseful and despairing, deprived God of exercising His Mercy and deprived all humanity of the example of a repentant heart going to Jesus for forgiveness. The one that we have now is Peter. We could say, "Wow! "God forgave him of a terrible sin." That wasn't <i>a </i>sin; it was three deliberate sins! And when did my Compassionate, Loving, Merciful Jesus ask in return for his repentance? Three acts of love. I would have made him sweat! I would say, "Look, I'm going to put you on trial, and the first false move buddy, you are out!" And I would have thought that was compassionate, very liberal. Do you see the difference between God and me and you, too, I'll make a bet. They say, "This man coped out on a crisis. "When'd they make you a leader?" But you see, if we're repentant and we're sorrowful and we ask forgiveness, the whole power of God and the mercy of God literally is dumped upon us. We're like little drops in the ocean, little bitty drops in the ocean. And that's what we need to understand. If you have sinned or you just can't accept your own weaknesses, be repentant, ask for forgiveness and say, "Jesus, I love You with my whole heart." Let the Spirit fill you with love and peace and joy and be a witness to His forgiving merciful love. God bless you. (applause) ♪ ♪
