+forgive from your heart (24th Sunday of Ordinary Time)
Obviously the theme of today’s readings is forgiveness, forgiveness from the
heart. When Peter asks how many times one is to forgive a brother or sister, as
many as seven times, Jesus tells him “not seven times but seventy-seven times”
or more exactly, one must forgive without any counting or calculation. Jesus
invites us into God’s own unconditional love, a love that is forever forgiving,
a love that has no limits.
To forgive in its Old English form is defined as ‘to give up resentment; to
cease to feel resentment against on account of a wrong committed.’ To forgive is
to let go of the kind of resentment we heard from Sirach that “wrath and anger
are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. To say ‘I forgive you’ is to
free yourself from the shackles of holding a grudge that weighs on the mind and
burdens the soul. Telling someone you forgive them does not condone the wrong,
nor is it weak. It takes a truly strong person to forgive, to forgive from the
heart.
There is the true story told of how the only son of Frank and Elizabeth Morris
here in Kentucky was struck and killed by a drunk driver. “They were consumed
with the idea of revenge. ‘We wanted him dead,’ Mrs. Morris admitted. But then
they began soon to realize that their reluctance to forgive was eating away at
them. They decided to visit the youth in jail. Then Mrs. Morris began helping
him in his struggle against alcohol abuse. ‘The accident had already wiped out
one very special life. I didn’t want to see it waste this young man’s life, too’
she said. Since the Morrises made the decision to speak words of forgiveness,
the young man has quit alcohol, become an active church member and lectures for
Mothers Against Drunk Driving.” A deep inner transformation took place in the
life of Mrs. Morris, in the life of her whole family. She tapped into God’s own
forgiving love, a love that gave a new lease on life for them and even the young
man that had committed the wrong.
Our readings today invite us into a whole new outlook on life, on the wrongs
that have happened or are happening in our lives. “None of us lives for oneself,
and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord and if we die,
we die for the Lord.” An outstanding example of this is a 16-year-old neighbor,
Adam Boone, who just died last Thursday. He was a victim of a very rare skin
disease that was life threatening from the very first weeks after his birth. But
due to the tender loving care of his parents Todd and Terry and the family, he
and his sister Ashley who suffered from the same disease, still lived full and
deeply meaningful lives, lives that have touched countless others. Because of
their faith, because of their willingness to accept what God had allowed to
happen mysteriously in their lives, lives that were wounded and could easily
have caused enormous harm to the family, they turned into manifestations of
divine mercy. They drew out the very best in parents, relatives and friends so
as to become manifestations of a divine Wisdom, a wisdom in them far beyond
their age. In the midst of their very weakness they came to know the infinite
love that God has for us. Instead of being hardened by their condition, they
revealed to us something beyond words, something that is only known by those who
can enter into their true condition with openness to divine love.
In our Gospel today we see a servant who never really learned the lesson of
mercy and forgiveness. He owed his master a huge amount, a more exact
translation has it at ten thousand talents, which would take an ordinary day
laborer over 150,000 years to pay off. The master moved with compassion lets the
servant go and forgives him the debt. But if you note, the servant never shows
any real sense of joy at having such a burden lifted from him, no appropriate
response of rejoicing and gratitude, no celebrating with his wife and children
over having been spared imprisonment and not sold with family into slavery. As a
result, it is almost inevitable that when a fellow servant pleads for
forgiveness for some minor debt, he almost strangles him and will not let him
off the lease penny. Having failed to experience what real forgiveness is, what
his master had done for him, he is ruthless with his own fellow servant. If only
the human heart could begin to appreciate the enormity of what God has done for
us in Jesus Christ!
The Eucharist gives us the occasion to do just this, to remember the
incomparable compassion God has shown all of us gathered here. Christ Jesus
raised up for us on the Cross manifests a redeeming love for all time, the depth
to which God has been moved and is moved by compassion for us. We have been
freed from the terrible weight of our sins, forgiven our guilt. If only we could
understand the measure of this gift, let ourselves rejoice in the vastness of
its riches, celebrate it with family and friends so that we come to know the
wonder of divine love. This is what we do in the Eucharist as we let ourselves
be filled with thanksgiving.
Sir. 27:30-28:7; Rom. 147-9; Mt. 18; 21-35
Michael Casagram, OCSO
Abbey of Gethsemani
11 September 2005
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