Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jan 15 2025

Forever Forgiving?

Erich Segal died at the beginning of 2010. I remember reading his best seller Love Story and being moved by its then famous line “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Over the years I have really come to disagree with this. I believe love means having to say you’re sorry and asking for forgiveness many times in life.

Today’s Gospel reminds us that love also means being willing to forgive many times in a life. We fail each other. We sin against each other. Sometimes we do this deliberately, sometimes thoughtlessly, but nonetheless it is painful for the one sinned against.

Is forgiveness ever easy—especially with a repeat offender? “Seven times?” Peter asks. “Seventy-seven times,” Jesus replies. Today’s readings give us the major reason to forgive others: God has forgiven us. There’s more. Not to forgive is to let anger and wrath poison our hearts. Being unforgiving can imprison a person, resulting in bitterness, revenge, and a slow death of the spirit. Not to forgive can be more costly for the one offended.

Paul tells us we belong to the Lord, are called to serve him, to do his will, which is the will of the Father. And God’s will is that we forgive one another. When the risen Lord first appeared to the disciples in the upper room, he wished them peace, and then gave them the power of the Spirit to forgive. This work is not limited to our going to the sacrament of reconciliation.

Consider/Discuss

Have you known the grace of being forgiven?
Have you known the freedom of forgiving another person?

Responding to the Word

We pray that we might have the gift of forgiveness, both of receiving and giving it to others in turn. We ask the Holy Spirit to empower us to be able to forgive what the world judges to be “unforgiveable.” While for us it can seem impossible, with God all things are possible.

Jan 15 2025

Forever Forgiving?

The tone of the passage from Sirach is set in the first verse. Wrath and anger may be instinctive responses to situations in life, but they are abhorrent if they are permanent dispositions of mind and heart. The certainty of death should prompt us to set aside anger or wrath. Life is too short to bear attitudes that can undermine our spirits. Sirach insists on the need to forgive others, for we too need to be forgiven. The basis of this teaching is not forgiveness by others, but forgiveness by God. We must be willing to extend to others the same gracious compassion that God has extended to us.

Paul maintains that Christ, by virtue of his death and resurrection, exercises power over life and death. In like manner, those who are joined to Christ are joined permanently. Nothing, neither life nor death, can separate them from the love of Christ (see Romans 8:38). He further insists that in every aspect of life and even in death, Christians are under the lordship of Christ. Having conquered death by means of his resurrection, Christ has gained lordship over all. Whether they live or they die, they belong to Christ and are accountable to Christ. This understanding is the bedrock of Christian ethics.

The rabbis taught that the duty to forgive was fulfilled if one forgave an offender three times. Peter must have thought that he was being extraordinarily generous if he forgave seven times. However, Jesus indicates that not even this is enough. He insists that we must be willing to forgive seventy-seven times. In other words, there must be no limit to our forgiveness. The radical nature of Jesus’ parable illustrates this. With one simple statement Jesus draws a connection between the generosity of the king and that of God. If God is willing to forgive the exorbitant debt we owe God, surely we can forgive the paltry debts owed us.

Jan 12 2025

Reflecting God’s Abundance

There is a creek behind the house where my daughter Maria used to live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. In spring, water generously cascades down from the mountaintops; the river sparkles and crashes and seems almost alive. Huge cedar logs float downstream upon that rush of water. You could hear the bubbling of flowing water when her kitchen window was open.

The mercy of God flows upon us like that river of generosity. The psalmist sings of that bounty: The Lord “redeems your life from destruction, and crowns you with kindness and compassion.” Jesus tells of the lavishness of a king who forgives his servant a huge debt. You can hear the bubbling of flowing water.

But today’s Gospel story doesn’t stay with abundance. It devolves rapidly to the servant’s forgetfulness of generosity, which leads him to such meanness and malice that he chokes his fellow servant, demanding immediate repayment. Instead of passing on that generosity, he nourishes anger and holds onto wrath. That is an abomination to the Giver of the river of life!

I was surprised when I’d visit Maria again in September. Her creek had shrunk to a silent trickle. Big logs were stuck in the rocks. Sticks and leaves were trapped behind the logs. Masses of gunk choked off the water. What had flowed in such a lively way in the spring was clogged in the fall.

When we refuse mercy to another, how can we expect to be healed ourselves? We choke off God’s generosity. Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” There are no limits to the cascading of God’s mercy. Jesus tells us that there should be no limits to our forgiveness as well. Flow, river, flow!

Consider/Discuss

In this season of harvest, take some time to look around and be grateful for God’s abundance. How does immersing ourselves in God’s generosity set us free to pour out mercy to others?
The resentments of earth may pull us down, but the Holy Spirit wants to bubble up and sparkle within you and me. What is blocking us? Where do we find pollution in our lives, the cedar logs of unforgiveness that dam(n) up our souls?

Living and Praying with the Word

Holy Spirit, we open our hearts to you. Fill us with your courage to love so that time after time, even when we’ve been hurt, we forgive. We pain you often. You have forgiven us so many times. Don’t let hard-heartedness choke us. We offer you those people and those issues that bother us. Please put them on a log and let them float down your river. Then bubble up within us and restore our joy.

Jan 12 2025

Scripture Study for

In a passage that mentions “sin” six times, Sirach focuses on refusal to forgive. Here the sinner is not so much the one who causes wrath and anger, as the one who “hugs them tight,” like a security blanket; not the one who offends, but the one who avenges the offense. It is preposterous to hope to be forgiven for one’s own sins if one is not willing to forgive others. It is presumptuous to expect the sinless deity to forgive our sins when, as sinful human beings, we are unwilling to do the same thing. Refusal to forgive is a form of hate, which is antithetical to the ethical perspective of the covenant between God and Israel.

Paul’s insistence that Christians live and die for the Lord occurs within an exhortation against judging others. Those whose consciences lead them to abstain from certain foods must not be despised by those with different scruples, and vice versa. The point, Paul says, is that each should be eating (or not eating) for the Lord. If we are doing it for the Lord, and it is not evil, then it is good. In fact, everything, even up to one’s own death, should be done for the Lord. It is the Lord, he goes on to say, who will judge us. We will give an account to the one for whom we have done everything, and that is the Lord, not each other.

Immediately after Jesus gives instructions on the church’s proper response to obstinate sinners (Matthew 18:15–20), Peter inquires about the limits of forgiveness. Jesus’ answer—there are no limits— must have astounded those who thought that seven times was already quite generous. The parable gives a straightforward rationale for the demand that humans place no limits on their willingness to forgive: because God places no limits on the divine willingness to forgive. To act as if we have the right to limit forgiveness when we ourselves must ask for it repeatedly constitutes gross hypocrisy and ingratitude. We ourselves are the ones who place limits on God’s forgiveness of us when we insist on placing limits on our forgiveness of others.

Jan 06 2025

God Is Always ISO (In Search Of)

The interaction today between Moses and God serves more as a contrast than a parallel with today’s Gospel. When God informs Moses of plans to start over again with Moses alone, and to let his wrath “blaze up against” the people for worshiping a golden calf, Moses has to remind God of the covenant’s promises. God does relent. In contrast, Jesus embodies the mercy of God, who sent Jesus for our salvation.

Jesus was sent to search out the one sheep who wandered off, to turn the house upside down to recover the misplaced coin, and to welcome back that deliberately lost son, allowing him the time to “come to his senses” and the freedom to choose to return home. Jesus is not the placating voice, tamping down God’s fiery anger, but the Father’s obedient Son, doing the Father’s will by reaching out with mercy and compassion. As Paul writes, Christ came into the world to save sinners. We put our trust in this.

We can see ourselves in any of these roles: one who wanders off, or becomes accidentally lost, or deliberately goes away—all of which leads to our being in a place we don’t belong, sometimes in a condition we are ashamed of. We can even be the one who doesn’t go off physically but whose heart is far from the Father, living our lives in bitterness, anger, resentment, or a refusal to forgive. Christ tells us his Father can’t wait for us to end up back where we belong—in our Father’s embrace.

Consider/Discuss

Do you need to be reminded of the Father’s great love for us all?
Does God need you to seek out someone who has wandered off, or even gotten deliberately lost?

Responding to the Word

Forgiving God, we join St. Paul in saying thank you for giving us Christ as a source of strength. May the words of Christ continue to move our hearts into knowing and trusting your love more deeply. Thank you for giving us a place at your table. To you be honor and glory.