Bishop Joseph Binzer, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, spoke Saturday at Immaculate Conception Church in Celina, Ohio, where Missionaries of the Precious Blood are in ministry. The bishop’s message was on the Father’s mercy, and he encouraged all of us to keep trying: “Sometimes I find myself confessing the same sin over and over, and I wonder, why am I doing this? I know other people say the same thing. But how many times am I to be forgiven? Jesus says not seven but seventy times seven. Jesus said that’s how you and I need to forgive people — so isn’t that what God is going to do for us? Would Jesus teach something that God is unwilling to do? No.
“That doesn’t mean I give up on myself, because Christ has not given up on me. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t confess that sin, because that’s the only way for me to take a step forward.”