Word to the Wise
Sunday, September 13, 2020 - 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time - A
[Sir 27:30-28:7; Rom 14:7-9; Matt 18:21-35]Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight....Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?....[Sirach] "You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?" [Matthew]
Before reading the gospel scripture from the Gospel According to Matthew for this Sunday, it could be a useful spiritual exercise to go back to the Sermon on the Mount and read the prayer that Jesus taught (teaches) his disciples [Matt. 6:9-15] along with the two verses that follow. Those two verses reinforce part of the prayer in a startling way: If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. The parable of the Unforgiving Servant will take on added depth! The passage from the Book of Sirach that provides the first scripture for today shows that Jesus was not offering something very new, simply reminding us of something very basic and very difficult.
It is difficult to remember that the forgiveness we receive in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is supposed to be shared with others! Part of every parish mission I preach is a service that features not only sacramental forgiveness, but an "examination of conscience" that challenges the listeners to forgive others. There is no list of particular sins but rather a list of the different kinds of people in a normal human life, including God and self!! Spouses, children, parents, siblings, bosses, co-workers, professional people - all of these are mentioned with a prayer that we might forgive them and also be forgiven for anything we may have done to hurt them! The last prayer is for the ability to forgive "that one person who has hurt me the most - that one person I swore I would never forgive!" The impact of this examination never fails to be profound. At one parish mission I preached, the next day an elderly gentleman approached me and thanked me and said, "I was finally able to forgive my mother!"
Christianity is not only about the list of persons in Matthew 25:31-45 who are the hungry, thirsty, sick and imprisoned whose needs cry out to us. It is also about forgiveness "from the heart." AMEN