One of my favorite new singers/songwriters is Noah Kahan. I’m a little biased because, like me, he is originally from Vermont. In a fine song entitled “Stick Season,” he sings of his hope to “cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad.” This lyric articulates his painful recognition of a dark spiritual “inheritance” from his father, and his hope to be free of it. We all inherit some degree of evil from our earthly forebears. It’s easy to feel doomed to repeat their darknesses.   
But we’re not so doomed, thank God. This week’s Gospel proclaims this. Whatever good or bad we received from our parents, we have a more definitive and perfect inheritance in God. Jesus commands us, “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). We have a perfect Father in heaven and are destined to inherit and reflect that perfect and merciful love. We have an inheritance of light, not darkness, and thus a whole new possibility of magnanimous love. Like any inheritance, this is a free gift to us. 
 What are we destined to repeat? Not the darkness of our earthly parents. We are destined to be a reflection of God’s life. Jesus liberates us from the inevitability of repeating whatever evils and imperfections are in our familial or cultural upbringings. It’s time to claim that perfect inheritance. ©LPi