(Homily 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Yr-A)
The readings of
today center on the necessity of forgiveness in our rapport with God and with
our brothers and sisters. The call and
emphasis on forgiveness is grounded upon the fact that we are recipients of
God’s mercy, and that we live under the forgiveness of God. The
word “forgiveness” abounds in the readings of this Sunday. First of all, it
talked about the forgiveness that God gives: “And the servant’s Master felt so
sorry for him that he let him go and cancelled the debt” (Mt. 18:27). Interestingly, the
first reading talks of fraternal forgiveness, as a necessary condition for
divine forgiveness: “pardon your neighbor any wrongs done to you, and when
you pray, your sins will be forgiven” (Sir.
28:2). Thirdly, the evangelist talks
about forgiveness without limits: “Then Peter went up to him and said,
Lord, how often I must forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven
times? Jesus answered, Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times” (Mt. 18:21-22). Thus, we may
well affirm that the measure of
forgiveness is to forgive without measure. Above
all, St. Paul in the second reading presents
the motive of forgiveness, which is nothing but our belongingness to the Lord,
for this he says: “For none of us lives for himself…while we are alive, we are
living for the Lord” (Rm. 14:7-8).
Indeed, forgiveness
makes the impossible possible, it transcends the human logic. It is the life of heaven on earth.
The teaching of the first reading (Sir. 27:30-28-7) on the theme of
forgiveness is close to the New Testament’s parlance on forgiveness.
In this passage the sacred author not
only placed the forgiveness of one’s neighbour as a necessary condition for
God’s forgiveness, but he equally led bare the human condition of createdness:
“remember the end of your life, and cease from enmity”. This is a reminder that
we are pilgrims on earth and as such hatred and enmity are obstacles in our
journey to the Promised Land. In synthesis,
the central message of this passage is that it is in pardoning that we are
pardoned. With the various questions the author raised on the reason we
have to forgive others he led us to true introspection. Just like the Psalmist
we cannot but say: “If you O Lord should mark our guilt who would survive (Ps. 130:3). Elsewhere, the Psalmist
entered into a spiritual bargain with God, for he does not want to be only a
recipient of God’s forgiveness he wanted to be a teacher too (object and
subject): “Give me back the joy of your salvation; sustain in me a generous
spirit. I shall teach the wicked your paths, and sinners will return to you” (Ps. 51:12-13).
In the Gospel passage (Mt. 18:21-35) on the parable of the unforgiving servant, which is only
found in the Gospel of Mathew, we see the typical phrase of St. Mathew: “My
heavenly Father” (v. 35). At the
heart of the parable is the rebuke of the refusal to show mercy on the part of
those who have received mercy from God. The
radicality of the moral of the Gospel is measured on the word pardon or
forgiveness. It is a divine invitation that surpassed and overcome the
famous lex talionis (law of retaliation) of the Old Testament: “Anyone
who injures a neighbor shall receive the same in return, broken limb for broken
limb, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. As the injury inflicted, so will be the
injury suffered” (Lv. 24:19-20). But
Jesus brought about a revolution with
his novelty on forgiveness. “You have heard how it was said: Eye for eye
and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer no resistance to the wicked.
On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as
well” (Mt. 5:38-39). The Gospels
are full of stories of the forgiving attitude of Jesus: on the cross (Lk.
23:34); to the penitent thief (Lk. 23:43).
Peter, having seen Jesus forgive others, and having experienced it in his own
life, asks if there can be any limit to forgiveness. Jesus gives an answer to emphasize
God's total love for his people.
Jesus narrated the parable of the two
debtors not just to illustrate the modalities of forgiveness, but instead to
affirm its urgency and necessity. Therein we have three contexts: the
master and the servant, the servant and his fellow servant, and again, the
master and the servant. The master cancelled the debts of that servant, the
debt of ten thousand talents. This
reveals the enormity of man’s debt before God. Then what has man to give
God in return? We have to show forgiveness to others as we have experienced it
from God. For this the master said: “Were you not bound, then, to have pity on
your fellow-servant just as I have pity on you? (v. 33). I think this is the
pivot of this passage. We are to
pardon or forgive because we have been forgiven by God.
Furthermore, in that passage Jesus teaches us in concrete terms, that we
are all debtors before God, and this debt exceeds all the human possibility of
payment. It is a debt we cannot pay. I remember the popular lyrics by Ellis
J. Crum:
He paid a
debt He did not owe
I owed a
debt I could not pay
I needed
someone to wash my sins away
And now I
sing a brand new song
Amazing
Grace
Christ
Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.
In
God there is always space for pardon, acceptance and re-acceptance, and that is
how he pays our impossible debt. Jesus gives us wonderful example of
forgiveness in and with the figure of the Master in the Parable. And Jesus
Christ is in person, the concrete expression of that parabolic Master, He says
“Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing” (Lk. 23:34). The most grievous debt of man before God is that of sin, the spiritual
and moral retrogression and stagnancy before God’s designs and abandonment of
God. God out of justice can leave man in his sinful actions, but He does
not; rather He approaches man with mercy and forgiveness instead of justice. As
in that parable, He “felt so sorry for him that he let him go and cancelled the
debt” (Mt. 18:27). However, in the parlance of God, pardon begets pardon, the one who has
experienced pardon from God, is called to carry out this divine gesture. Here, the person becomes an object and a subject
of God’s forgiveness; in the measure he or she is able to give to others
what he has received from God. In the
passage of today’s Gospel more than any other place, man is called to be a
collaborator and a dispenser of Divine Mercy and forgiveness. To pardon
those that offended us and to receive pardon from the ones we have offended is
the attitude that God expects from us. Interestingly, if God calls us to become
subjects of his forgiveness and mercy, it suffices to say that the Church has to be a house of Pardon and
a house of Mercy. The Church is the house and the instrument of God’s
Mercy, and the sacrament of reconciliation is an existential experience of it.
Again, what we are called to embrace is a generous pardon, without limits and
measures, remember the word of God says “seventy times seven”. It therefore, has to be a pardon that has
its inspiration from the pardon received from God. For this, the parabolic
master asked: “Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow-servant
just as I had pity on you?” (Mt. 18:33).
As we read in the first reading, it is pardon or forgiveness that God wanted as
a condition for us to be pardoned, “pardon your neighbor any wrongs done to
you, and when you pray, your sins will be forgiven” (Sir. 28:2). The pardon or forgiveness we are talking about here
has to be motivated by the filial
sentiment that a Christian does not belong to himself, rather he belongs to
the Lord. For this we have to hearken to the voice of St. Paul in the second reading, to know how to pardon from the
heart (Rom. 14: 5-9). As such, it is
a pardon that endures in time, leaving out every form of rancor, retaliation and resentment. For “if anyone nurses anger
against another, can one then demand compassion from the Lord?” (Sir. 28:3).
Forgiveness
in the human eyes and logic is scandalous, because it requires conversion from
the one who suffered the pain and not from the one who committed it.
Notwithstanding, we must admit that forgiveness drains the poison and heals the
wounds that rancor and hatred create in the human heart, it brings peace. It
creates new hearts and new minds. We
need to forgive and ask for forgiveness, for we hurt others and others hurt
us. Forgiveness is necessary to maintain a healthy relationship
and sincere love, be it, in the family, in the Church, in the work or business
places and in our society at large. When
forgiveness is sincere, it renews and becomes a factor for growth in love.
Jesus himself observed this in the house of Simon: “There was once a creditor
who had two men in his debt; one owed him five hundred denarii, the other
fifty. They were unable to pay, so he let them both off. Which of them will
love him more? Simon answered, the one who was let off more, I suppose” (Lk.7:41-43).
Humanly speaking, sometimes we find out
that pardon or forgiveness is indeed tasking, difficult, and to some even
impossible, for at times you hear expressions like: “over my dead body”, “I
will never”. Of course, there is no
gainsaying the fact that pardoning sincerely from the heart is sometimes very
difficult, but not impossible. Once again, as we have seen in the readings
of today, pardon is repeated like a refrain, as a condition to receive God’s
pardon. And each time I or we pray the Lord’s Prayer, it reminds me of this
evangelical truth. The Gospel with that parable of the two servant-debtors
exemplified this. To the question of Peter: how many times will my brother offend
me, seven times? In the parlance of Peter (the human parlance) seven times is
already much. But Jesus responded No; I tell you seventy times seven, which
entails forgiving always. For a true
Christian there should be no limit, no measure and no condition to pardon or
forgiveness. To forgive does not necessary mean to forget. One can pardon,
but does not succeed in removing it from his or her memory. To forget or to
cancel a wrong received from one’s memory is not within our power. But to
forgive, Yes! To bear grudges, Yes! Because they depend on our will. To pardon,
also does not mean keeping quiet to injustice and overlooking wicked and evil
actions, we have to continue to fight for justice.
On the other hand, one can argue that if we pardon in order to be pardoned by God, then we
pardon because of our own interest, even though one may say that it is an
egoistic interest. But this type of question springs from the human logic. But
the most profound motive is found in the responsorial psalm: “He (God) forgives
all your offences, cures all your diseases. He redeems your life from the
abyss, crowns you with faithful love and tenderness… He (God) does not treat us
as our sins deserve, nor repay us as befits our offences. As the height of
heaven above the earth, so strong is his faithful love for those who fear him.
As the distance of east from west, so far from us does he put our faults” (Ps. 103:2-4; 10-12). This instead
should be the real profound reason and interest for pardon and mercy, the
imitation of our heavenly Father, for this St. Mathew says “Be perfect, just as
your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt.
5:48). And St. Luke treading the same line of Mathew admonished, “Be
compassionate just as your Father is compassionate” (Lk. 6:36). The Beatitudes equally resonates the fact: “Blessed are
the merciful, they shall have mercy shown them” (Mt.5:7). In the words of St. Augustine, we pardon in order to imitate the goodness and the mercy of God, to
imitate his divine benevolence and comprehension, being conscious of the fact
that like us, our brothers who offend us or err are poor, miserable,
conditioned by many human factors and limitations. Secondly, in the parlance of
St. Paul, the motive of this pardon is our belongingness to the Lord: “For none
of us lives for himself…while we are alive, we are living for the Lord” (Rm. 14:7-8).
The
virtue and value of forgiveness were so much important and necessary in the
preaching of Jesus that he presented a
case where reconciliation and forgiveness worth more than our sacrifices or
offerings: “If you are bringing your offering to the alter and there
remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there
before the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first, and then come
back and present your offering” (Mt.
5:23-24). We must admit that forgiveness is a hard virtue to gain and
maintain, and the difficulty can be felt in the question of Peter: “How many times
must I forgive?” Forgiveness is not merely a question of how often or how
many times, rather it reflects God's unending readiness to pardon us. There are no limits to His forgiveness. Today,
as we hear these words of Jesus, we are like those who are bringing their
offerings to the altar, to us therefore, the words of Jesus resounds and re-echoes:
“go and be reconciled”. May these words accompany us as we go back home this
morning and may Jesus give us the grace to be able to practice it. Lord Jesus
enlighten our minds and enlarge our hearts, give us a big and a generous heart,
that is ready to forgive always, in imitation of You, the manifestation of the
Father’s Merciful Love. Amen!
(Fr. Vitus M.C. Unegbu, SC)
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