Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIV per Annum A
17 September 2023

Last weekend’s readings instructed us about the difficult work of confronting error and sin.  This is a work we are called to do and which we must do with the mind of Christ, with the approach of charity (or love).  When we must face the need to repent, when we ourselves are called to repent and change, we must not harden our hearts to that movement of God’s grace, to the call of His voice.  This weekend’s readings continue that theme, reminding us that mercy and forgiveness should mark our Christian life.  Our faith stretches us and challenges us to live by higher standards than the secular world proposes.

The readings today tell us that we cannot suffer any illusions about being Christian if we refuse to forgive and to show mercy to others.  The first reading describes a way of being and acting that is not of God.  Unfortunately, it also describes a way of being and acting for which Christians at times try to make excuses.  But no such excuses exist in God.  The first reading said, “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.  The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance….”  “Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?  Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins?”  Even we who are believers make excuses for our behavior, while condemning the behavior of others.  As God’s Word tells us: to the degree that we hug wrath and anger to ourselves, we are not living in God.  To the degree that we nourish anger and refuse mercy, we are really preventing ourselves from experiencing the mercy we need from God, if we are to be saved from a merciless Hell of our own making.

Jesus adopts this wisdom of the Old Testament and teaches that we must reflect God’s mercy if we belong to God.  Jesus’ teaching also erodes any false notions that we can be true Christians while mercilessly harboring lack of civility, lack of charity, and anger toward another.  Such behavior will not breed God’s life in us.  Instead it will breed death and eternal destruction.  Jesus teaches this by showing us the wicked servant who refuses to forgive a fellow servant’s debt, even though his own debt had just been wiped clean.  Jesus’ teaching tells us that it cannot be this way in his kingdom, the Church, because it cannot and will not be this way when his kingdom comes in its fullness in Heaven.  In the gospel, Peter thinks he’s being generous by offering to forgive seven times.  Jesus indicates his disciples must forgive seventy-seven times.  The reference to sevens is a way of indicating fullness or completeness, of saying that his disciples must extend God’s mercy and forgiveness many times – even every time.

Surely there is some catch here.  Surely there is some way around this, right?  No.  Not if one belongs to Christ.  Jesus warns that we cannot and will not be forgiven if we are unwilling to forgive others.  Jesus tells us clearly that we must be merciful as our Father is merciful.  And St. Paul explains why this is so.  He writes, “None of us lives for oneself…. If we live, we live for the Lord…. we are the Lord’s.”  We have been given the Father’s mercy at the price of the precious Blood of His only Son, Jesus our Lord.  If we take that gift, but hold onto wrath and anger, refusing to forgive others, then we make a mockery of the cost of the Blood of Christ.  We call cheap what is the most precious Blood of Jesus.

We must combat this tendency of our fallen nature to make excuses for anger, wrath, and vengeance.  These excuses show we rule our lives by sin instead of the grace of God.  When we hug wrath and anger to ourselves, when we hold on to that, we actually are hugging dysfunction, unhappiness, and eternal death all the closer.  It is a grand challenge to truly live as a Christian, aware of our own need to confess, repent, and experience God’s mercy, so that we can extend that mercy to others.  In our time many Christians live day after day in grave sin, compounding evil upon themselves because they refuse to experience God’s mercy in confession, or they rarely do so.  People sometimes say they don’t like confession, or they don’t come because they are nervous about telling a priest their sins.  This may be partially true.  But it may be more likely that people who stay away from confession perhaps recognize the hypocrisy in coming to the sacrament to expect forgiveness from God while they hold onto anger against others.  Perhaps infrequent practice of confession in our time is actually a sign that we need to form our lives around today’s readings, being willing to put away debts so that we can get on with the critical work of having our own debts forgiven.  We only have so much time to live according to God’s Word.  The first reading wisely reminds us: “Remember your last days, set enmity aside; remember death and decay, and cease from sin!”