TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY OF YEAR "A"

TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY OF YEAR   I 

Forgiveness:  Mt. 18, 21 - 35

Mt. 18, 21 – 35: Forgiveness

Introduction:      Everyone needs to be given a second chance.

We expect clemency of God, and of others, but we find it difficult to practise this virtue ourselves. The God of love always offers forgiveness at his initiative, expecting us to do the same. In today’s Gospel, Jesus illustrates this teaching with a thought-provoking parable that could make his listeners cringe with shame – the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

Let us throw ourselves on the mercy of God  (since his mercy is our only link to him), begging him to melt our hearts of stone, so that we may, like him, be merciful ourselves. May we be sorry for our unforgiving attitudes, and confess our sins to God and to one another.

 

HOMILY

The closer we are to one another, the more capable we are of hurting one another.  Our natural instinct is to nurse resentment and anger.  Anger is like a river of acid flowing through our brain, corroding it and driving us insane. Bad for health, besides.  An unforgiving person develops a kink in his cranium that makes him ignore simple logic, namely: “If we nurse anger against another, can we honestly expect compassion from the Lord ?” Jesus says the only way of removing the poison of anger and resentment is by endless forgiving. According to the Jewish rabbinical teaching, a man must forgive three times. So Peter’s offer of forgiving an offending brother seven times must have sounded generous.  Didn’t he get a jolt when Jesus, probably with a serene smile, said: “Not seven times but seventy times seven”  -  which means without limit.

The New Testament is sublime in its teaching on forgiveness:  there is no place in the Gospel for vengeance.  Jesus’ teaching, clear and forceful, is crowned by his own example on the cross, where he broke the vicious cycle of anger and resentment. There he is on the receiving end of all the resentment and anger of the world, and there he gives his life for those who rage against him. “Father, forgive them.” In all our grudging half-hearted attempts to forgive we are confronted by the wideness of his mercy.

The wideness of God’s mercy is larger than life. In this parable of the unforgiving servant, everything in the story is larger than life. The servant owes ten thousand talents. The talent was not a coin but certain weight of money, or gold or silver. The ten thousand talents of gold comprised an astronomical sum, equal in value to the gross national product of many a modern nation. The servant asks for time to pay back this huge sum. The response of the king is unbelievable. He takes pity on his servant and cancels the whole debt, leave alone the time. Debt and time both cancelled.  That is what God is all about:  he’s in a mad hurry to forgive us. He’s madder than that. If you read the New Testament closely you’ll see that God forgives us even in advance of our act of contrition. What is contrition? Contrition is nothing more than awakening to God’s forgiving mercy that was always there. .  Ask yourself, “What is God for ?”  Answer: “God is for giving.”

So what are we for ?  We are here to sink our differences and extend the hand of renewal.

What is marriage? You can give a legal definition, like marriage is a contract; or a biblical definition, like marriage is a covenant; or the commonest definition, like it is a life long-union. But the best definition is know is that marriage is a community of mutual forgiveness. That is the secret of a successful marriage, as it is of any community. When a father in Northern Ireland prayed for his daughter’s murderers to be forgiven, he became an immediate focus of amazed admiration.  It is the concept of forgiving love that distinguishes Christian martyrs from those so-called “martyrs” who are actually terrorists. Both are prepared to die for a cause. But the terrorist, in dying, only adds to the violence in the world, hating and cursing what he has killed and encouraging others to do the same.  On the other hand, consider St. Stephen, who prayed for his persecutors even while they stoned him to death; Oscar Romero, who forgave his enemies in advance of his assassination; he was shot in the head while celebrating Holy Mass; Martin Luther King, or Maximillian Kolbe and others.  They responded to violence by begging God to have mercy on its perpetrators, and by doing so,  they brought the world closer to redemption.

During the Second World War, an unknown woman in Ravensbrook concentration camp left this prayer by the body of a dead child. Let us pray her prayer today:

“O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will but also those of ill-will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us. Remember the fruits we have bought, thanks to this suffering  -  fruits of our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this.  And when they come to judgement, let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.”

If you found that prayer too complicated, and the next time you feel anger rattling your nerves, take my advice: keep repeating the names of the Holy Family of Nazareth, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph.”