Sept. 11 - XXIV Sunday in Ordinary Time
The theme of our liturgy this week is similar to last week's but not exactly. Now we are talking not of the individual and "the Church" but simply of the brother or sister who has offended us.
How can we ever acquire the forgiveness outlined in the First Reading? Well, it's anything but easy and yet there is no real alternative: "Remember your last days, set enmity aside. Remember death and decay and cease from sin." In a word, all of us badly need to be forgiven for our many offences against the Lord and, fortunately, we can be and we will be .. . if we ourselves generously forgive others.
We have spoken about this before: a) as soon as a thought of how badly X has treated you enters your mind . . .BANISH IT! It is much more harmful than the well-known "bad thoughts." b) As soon as it enters your mind again . . . BANISH IT! And continue with that process until you don't have the thought any more or you begin to feel more serene about it. The alternative? A long and much more painful Purgatory.
The Responsorial Psalm: "the Lord is kind and merciful "... and you and I had better imitate him very closely! When we have managed substantially to get rid of our sense of outrage, then we begin to see the truth of what has been done to us and even if it is very harmful. . . God Himself was pinned to a cross by little creatures He was keeping alive as they pinned Him!" If we have sinned seriously we are one of those creatures.
The Second Reading finds St. Paul continuing the general message with a different slant: we are totally dependent on the same Lord with nothing of our own, so why do we spend so much time in condemning and refusing to forgive? Death will come for us all and would we want to spend our last moments turning the knife in our wound?
The Gospel finds Peter being very generous: the Rabbis said we should forgive three times but after that. . . Peter, generously, suggests to the Lord that perhaps twice that number of times would be more in line with Christian thinking . . . and he adds a seventh time for luck. What a surprise when the Lord tells this immortal parable which teaches a lesson rather than give an account of an actual happening - the amounts of money are rather improbable, for example, but this is precisely why they have shock value. The lesson is quite clear: without incessant prayer and an even more incessant effort to banish all thought of revenge from our hearts ... we may appear before our Judge still sadly fixated in considerations which will delay for far too long our entry into eternal happiness.
~September 2011 Concord
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