It is 19th February 2016. The readings are from Ezekiel 18:21-28; and the Gospel from Matthew 5:20-26. The first reading insists on the interior conversion. God is truly interested in our change of heart and God is not at all having any pleasure in punishing us in any moment of our lives. God wants us to renounce sins and enjoy God’s promises and blessings. God’s laws are not intended to punish rather to convert our constant clinging to sins and sinful attachments. God forgets our past sins when we make an effort to quell the thirst for sins. Sins do grow as we grow older. Sin destroys our integrity and faith in God. Sins make us to be stubborn, blind and deaf to the plan of God. In order to escape pain and suffering caused by our habitual sinning, we need to die to our sins. We need to deal with our addictions to sins. Somehow, we have been addicted, attracted, allured by sins. God promises us that God will reward our every tiny effort in dealing with sins. When we have dealt with our sins, we begin to be at peace with God, and to be reconciled with one another. God wants us to live not to die. God hates to see a good person turns into sinful person. God cannot tolerate sins in us. Lent is indeed a serious pruning time. Every garden has a weed of its own kind. Every plant has the parasites accumulated by time. “Because one has considered and turned away from all the sins that one had committed, the person shall surely live; the person shall not die.” (Ez.18:28). The responsorial Psalm pleads in prayer, “If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt, Lord, who would survive?” (Ps.129:3). In the Gospel Jesus challenges us to convert. We are expected to go beyond the requirements. Our personal conversion and holiness must be better and richer than those who do not believe in the Gospel of love and life. Personal reconciliation with God and one another is very much needed through the Works of Mercy. May you have peaceful day.