We all have to ask for forgiveness. The Pope said, during his homily on Tuesday morning in Casa Santa Marta.
Pope Francis spoke on the season of Lent as a time to prepare our hearts to receive God’s forgiveness. A forgiveness that is in turn, infinite, forgetting the faults of others.
POPE FRANCIS
"When God forgives, his forgiveness is so great that it is as though God forgets. Quite the opposite of what we do, as we chatter: ‘But so-and-so did such-and-such,’ and we have the complete histories of many people, don’t we? From antiquity through their Middles Ages, their modernity, and even down to their present – and we do not forget. Why? Because we do not have a merciful heart.”
Pope Francis insisted on the need to forgive, because if you have a closed heart, God can not enter.
EXCERPTS FROM PAPAL HOMILY
( Source: News.va)
"In the Gospel passage, explaining to Peter that we must always forgive, Jesus tells the parable of the two debtors, the first who gets a pardon from his master, while owing him a huge fortune, and who even shortly afterward was himself unable to be as merciful with another, who owed him only a small sum:”
"In the Our Father we pray: ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ It is an equation: the two sides go together. If you are not able to forgive, how will God forgive you? He wants to forgive you, but He will not if you have closed hearts, where mercy cannot enter. ‘But, Father, I forgive, but I cannot forget the bad turn that so-and-so did me ...’. Well, ask the Lord to help you to forget. That, however, is another matter. We can forgive, but we cannot always forget. Sometimes we say, ‘I forgive you,’ when we mean, ‘you’ll pay me later’. This, never: forgive as God forgives – to the utmost.”
"May Lent prepare our hearts to receive God’s forgiveness – but let us receive it and then do the same with others: forgive heartily. Perhaps you never even greet me in the street, but in my heart I have forgiven you. In this way, we get closer to this thing so great, so Godly, which is mercy. Forgiving, we open our hearts so that God’s mercy might come and forgive us, for, we all have need of pardon, need to ask forgiveness. Let us forgive, and we shall be forgiven. Let us have mercy on others, and we shall feel that mercy of God, who, when He forgives, [also] ‘forgets.’”