As we move toward the end of this year’s Lenten season, while there is a presumption that you have been engaging in some additional aesthetic practices as a necessary effort to prepare for the reception of Easter graces, it is not too difficult to notice a common thread in all three of this Sunday’s holy scripture readings, i.e. forget about the past, whether successes or failures, and concentrate on the future.

Thus Isaiah: “Remember not the events of the past… see I am doing something new.” St. Paul to the Philippians: “… forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead.” And finally, Jesus to the woman caught in adultery: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”

It is never too late to repent. But it is necessary to do so, if we want to share in the new creation. “I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”