A Word Before the Homily
Good morning, my friends.
I’m sorry today’s homily is coming to you a little late today. Yesterday my family celebrated my Uncle’s 80th birthday, and I took some time away from my desk to go to the party and celebrate. With the Podcast being released on Mondays, weekends have become rather complicated, I hope you understand.
But I do still want to encourage you, as I always do, to get to Mass today if you are able. Many parishes will offer one sometime in the afternoon, and I know not everyone lives on the East Coast of the US as I do, so maybe you still have time.
There is something deeply important about praying beside people we have to learn to love, hearing their voices join ours, and coming to the Lord’s table together.
And if church has wounded you, if you’re homebound, caring for someone, traveling, or simply not ready to walk through those doors, you are welcome here. You do not have to explain your absence to earn a place in this community.
Today I want to talk about the grievances we carry, the ones we inherit, and the possibility of putting something better into the hands of those who come after us. I’m glad we can consider that together.
Your Brother in Christ,
Today’s Readings
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 130
Reading 1
Sirach 27:30—28:7
Wrath and anger are hateful things,
yet the sinner hugs them tight.
The vengeful will suffer the LORD’s vengeance,
for he remembers their sins in detail.
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?
Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself,
can he seek pardon for his own sins?
If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath,
who will forgive his sins?
Remember your last days, set enmity aside;
remember death and decay, and cease from sin!
Think of the commandments, hate not your neighbor;
remember the Most High’s covenant, and overlook faults.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12
R. (8) The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.
He pardons all your iniquities,
heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction,
crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.
He will not always chide,
nor does he keep his wrath forever.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he put our transgressions from us.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.
Reading 2
Romans 14:7-9
Brothers and sisters:
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;
so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
For this is why Christ died and came to life,
that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
Alleluia
John 13:34
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I give you a new commandment, says the Lord:
love one another as I have loved you.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Matthew 18:21-35
Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive?
As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold,
along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
in payment of the debt.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants
who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
‘Pay back what you owe.’
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
But he refused.
Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison
until he paid back the debt.
Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master
and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him, ‘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?’
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”
Who Will Put Down Their Weapons First?
What the Gospel asks of us when everyone has a reason to keep the quarrel alive.
There is a quote I once heard, attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, so profound that it changed the whole way I think about the world.
“Harboring hatred is like drinking poison and hoping for the other person to die.”
I absolutely love that quote. It encapsulates what hatred does to us so thoroughly.
Only problem is, Gandhi didn’t say it. I have no idea how it got to be so readily attached to his name. It comes from the AA community, whose Big Book I once heard a bishop call the greatest work of modern spiritual writing.
Of course, I hadn’t started writing for Substack yet when he said that.
Kiiiiiding. Kiiiiiding.
You’ve all heard the forgiveness homily a hundred times. You may have even heard my own a couple of times at this point. So I want to do something a little different. I want to give you the why. I want to explore what happens when we fail, and what becomes possible when we actually do what Jesus asks of us.
And I want to consider what happens when one side finally says, “I’ll go first. I’ll be the first to put down my weapons.”
Look at our world right now.
Just look at it.
How much suffering are we willing to inflict because we believe our grievances entitle us to inflict it? How many people who had nothing to do with the original injury must be made to pay before we consider the account settled?
You can ask those questions of a country. You can also ask them of a family.
Somewhere, somebody did something wrong. Perhaps something terribly wrong. And the people they hurt told the story, as wounded people need to do. But over time, the story became something everyone was expected to carry. Children who were never part of the original quarrel learned which relatives they weren’t supposed to love. Making contact became an act of disloyalty. An invitation to a wedding became a declaration of war.
Eventually, someone had to explain to a child why two people who are supposed to love each other could not be in the same room.
And everyone involved could explain why they were right.
That is what frightens me. We can become so preoccupied with establishing our right to be angry that we stop asking what our anger is doing to the people around us.
Sirach understands us rather well.
“Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”
What an extraordinary choice of words. Hugs them tight. We cherish the thing that is consuming us. We protect it against anyone who might ask us to let it go.
Because by then, letting go can feel like losing something. If I forgive you, who will bear witness to what you did? If I stop demanding that you suffer, will anybody understand how much I suffered? If our people make peace with your people, what does that say about the people we buried?
Those are serious questions. They deserve more than someone breezily telling us to move on.
But we must also ask what happens if we never do.
The people we buried will still be gone. Will there be fewer grieving families because we created some more? Will our children be safer because we taught another generation to fear them? At what point does our determination to honor yesterday’s suffering become a decision to ensure tomorrow’s?
I think this is part of why Jesus is so relentless about forgiveness. He knows what human beings can build out of an injury. He knows how readily we can turn our suffering into permission to cause suffering.
And in today’s Gospel, He makes us watch it happen.
A servant stands before his king owing an amount he cannot possibly repay. He is about to lose everything. His wife and children are caught up in the consequences. He falls down and begs for patience.
The king forgives the debt.
Try to imagine what that means for this man. The future he thought was gone has been returned to him. His family’s life can continue. He can leave that room knowing that what he owed will no longer determine every day ahead of him.
Then he finds another servant who owes him money, takes him by the throat, and demands payment.
I want us to notice something here: the money really is owed.
Jesus could have told a story about a man inventing a grievance. He doesn’t. This servant has a claim. If you asked him why he was angry, he could tell you.
But look at what he is doing with his hands.
That is the examination of conscience in this Gospel. We have spent a great deal of time explaining our grievances. Christ is asking us to look at what we are doing with them.
And I have to submit to that examination, too. If I write about someone’s cruelty, am I hoping they will stop being cruel? Would I welcome their repentance? Or have I become so invested in opposing them that I would scarcely know what to do if they changed?
It is possible to begin with a righteous cause and gradually acquire an appetite for somebody else’s humiliation. We need to be willing to recognize that in ourselves, especially when the people around us are applauding.
The servant’s tragedy is that mercy has reached him, and he refuses to let it reach anyone else. He has been given an opportunity to live in a different kind of world. He immediately sets about recreating the old one.
Jesus ends this story with a severe judgment. Receiving God’s mercy carries a responsibility. We cannot keep asking Him to release us while taking everyone else by the throat.
So how does the story change?
Somebody goes first.
And I know what an enormous thing that is to ask. Going first means giving up the certainty that the other person will have to earn every inch of your mercy. It means accepting that they may misunderstand you, that your own side may criticize you, that the first attempt may fail.
It also means surrendering something you might actually be owed. The king cancels a real debt. Forgiveness costs him that claim.
For us, the cost may be the last word. It may be the satisfaction of finally making someone feel as small as they once made us feel. It may be accepting that the apology we deserve is never coming, and deciding we still have a life to live.
None of this requires us to return to someone who is harming us. Trust must be rebuilt through trustworthy conduct, and sometimes distance remains necessary. The people watching in the Gospel do not tell the servant being choked to tolerate it. They report the cruelty. They intervene.
That is part of our Christian responsibility, too.
When a family, a movement, or a nation begins using its wounds to justify cruelty, Christians ought to be among the first to object. We ought to be able to say, “Yes, what happened was wrong. Yes, those who did it should answer for it. And these people you are hurting now are human beings. You cannot do this to them.”
Even when the people doing it vote like us. Even when they worship with us. Even when we know their grief by name.
Our allegiance to Christ has to be strong enough to make us inconvenient to our own side.
Paul tells us today that we belong to the Lord. We cannot hand that belonging over to a party, a country, or a family feud and then expect Jesus to bless whatever they require of us.
He has already told us what He requires: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
And God has gone first with us. In Christ, He has come toward a wounded, sinful humanity and made reconciliation possible. Every one of us who depends on His mercy is being asked to participate in that work.
Imagine what could become possible if we did.
Imagine a child being told, “Our families had a terrible falling-out. We’re trying to repair it.” That child has just received an entirely different inheritance.
Imagine someone admitting wrongdoing and discovering that we are willing to help them make it right. Imagine a community where changing your mind is allowed, where repentance has somewhere to lead, where your worst act does not become the only thing anyone will ever let you be.
Imagine countries measuring success partly by whether children on both sides of a border can sleep safely. Imagine Christians insisting on that, persistently, publicly, even when it costs us approval.
There would still be difficult conversations. There would still be consequences, sorrow, and work to do. But people would have a future they could spend building something together.
That is what the king briefly places in the servant’s hands: a future.
And that is what we can place in one another’s hands when we refuse to make every tomorrow a collection day for yesterday’s debts.
I cannot promise you that the person you reach toward will reach back. Jesus gives us no such guarantee. But we can decide that our own lives will no longer be devoted to keeping the quarrel alive. We can apologize for our part without attaching a prosecution of theirs. We can refuse to encourage cruelty. We can leave room for someone to become better than we remember them.
We can pray for peace and then behave as though we would actually welcome it.
Sirach tells us to remember our last days and set enmity aside. There is only so much life available to us. Only so much time to love these people, to raise these children, to do some good in this wounded world.
I want us to leave them more than an account of who wronged us.
Let them have the story of how the fighting ended. Let them remember that we told the truth, protected those who needed us, and found the courage to offer mercy.
Somebody has to go first.
With God’s help, it can be us.
A Prayer for the Courage to Go First
Lord Jesus Christ,
You know the wrongs we have suffered
and the wrongs we struggle to admit.
Meet us where anger has taken hold.
Give us courage to protect those being harmed,
humility to answer for the harm we have done,
and mercy enough to desire our enemies’ repentance.
Help us release the punishment we keep rehearsing.
Teach us to speak truth without cruelty
and to take the first faithful step toward peace.
Let the children who come after us
inherit fewer hatreds because we were here.
May the mercy we have received from You
reach another person through us today.
Amen.
And Now It’s Your Turn
Has someone ever gone first with you, offering an apology or mercy that made a different relationship possible?
What would you like the next generation of your family or community to inherit in place of an old grievance?
You’re welcome to share what you can. There is no need to name anyone or tell a story that is still too tender to make public.
If someone you love is trying to end an old quarrel, consider sharing this homily with them as encouragement for the work of peace.
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May the Lord bless you and keep you, heal what has been wounded, and give you courage for the next faithful step. You and your loved ones are in my prayers.