733 James I. Harrison Jr. Parkway East - Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35405

Browsing Father Michael Deering's Sunday Homilies

Receiving forgiveness requires granting forgiveness!

Homily originally presented on September 13, 2020

by Monsignor Deering.

 

Receiving forgiveness requires granting forgiveness!

 

A single mother, who was struggling to pay all her bills,

received two letters in the mail one day.

The first letter was an offer to consolidate her debt into lower monthly payments.

The other letter was notification that she had just won $1 Million in the lottery.

 

So, she sighs, throws the lottery notification into the trash ...

and begins to fill out the paperwork for the loan consolidation.

 

Does that sound absurd? Yes, it certainly does!

But that’s essentially what the unmerciful servant does in today’s Gospel.

 

When his master confronts him about the massive amount of money that he owes,

all he asks for is more time to pay it back.

It doesn’t dawn on him to ask for anything else;

he never asks for the debt to be cancelled.

He pleads, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.”

 

To him debts had to be repaid. And that’s why he carries that same standard when dealing with his fellow servant, who owed him a much smaller amount of money.

 

Rules are rules ... and they must be followed.

 

But thank goodness ... our ways are not God’s ways!

 

Jesus, who is Lord over all has the power to wash away all sin & make us debt free.

 

So,  here’s the good newswe’ve won the lottery!

In Jesus Christ, all of our debts have been paid offcompletely.

 

When we come to him with repentance,

He doesn’t just give us more time to make up for our sins ...

withholding his mercy until we do.

 

No, when we express our sorrow for our sins ...

Jesus immediately washes them away in His Divine Mercy!

 

This took a while for me to understand this. How many times I went to Confession growing up ... and couldn’t wait to get to the pew to pray my Penance

thinking that God’s forgiveness was contingent on me doing my penance first.

 

And how refreshing it was to finally realize that God’s forgiveness

comes at the moment of absolution!           Mercy comes before repayment!

 

 

 

And since God dispenses His mercy quickly and repeatedly to us ...

He wants us to dispense mercy quickly and repeatedly to others.

 

Why do we hesitate to do this?

 

Well you see, God made each and every person different and unique, and for that reason there will always be things that we’re not going to like about others.

 

So thank goodness, God never told us that we had to like our neighbor!

Nowhere in Scripture did God ever say, “You have to like your neighbor!”

 

What does God say? In many places, He says you must love your neighbor.”

 

So, this means loving people that we don’t necessarily like ...

    which means that we’re going to have to look past some things ...

        that we don’t like about others ... in order to love them for the love of God.

 

This was the very directive we heard in our First Reading from the Book of Sirach,    

      where God says, “Think of the commandments … and overlook faults.”

 

As you well know, that’s not easy to do. When we see the faults and limitations of others, there’s a real temptation to hold onto our dislike of them and use it as an excuse for getting angry or unpleasant with them. Sirach refers to this when he says,

Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner holds them tight.” 

 

Some people seem to enjoy holding grudges

and keeping the memory of offenses against them alive.

 

Sirach says this will be to their eternal regret ... for if they do not grant mercy to others, they will suffer the Lord’s vengeance.

 

To further persuade us to show mercy, Sirach urges us: “Remember your last days.”

 

Those who want a happy death must do more than think about being merciful ...

rather, they must put aside all hostility, stop obsessing about vengeance,

and ignore the faults of others.

 

Given that each person is different in their appearance, their intelligence, their personality, their habits, their thoughts, and their opinions, it’s a reality of life that other people are going to offend us ... either knowingly or unknowingly.

 

And the only way we’re going to be able to fulfill God’s command ...

to love one another” is to be able to forgive them for their faults and offenses.

 

Today Sirach says, “Forgive your neighbor’s injustice.”

And Jesus also says “(Forgive your neighbor), not 7 times but 77 times!”

 

God’s guidance is consistent and clear:

 we’re to forgive the faults of our neighbors ... over and over again.

 

You see, if God’s mercy is without end,

then the mercy that we show as His disciples must be without end too.

 

When Peter asked Jesus how many times he needed to forgive an offender ...

he suggested the number that signified completeness ... the number 7.

 

Picking up on the symbolism, Jesus no doubt shocked Peter by expanding it to ...

the extraordinary level of forgiveness of ... 77 times!

 

In doing this, Jesus was declaring that ... forgiveness ... has no bounds!

 

We Catholics know what it’s like to formally ask for forgiveness in Confession.

And we trust that right then & there ... we receive God’s full forgiveness

each and every time!

Well, Jesus expects us to do the same ...  forgiving others ... each and every time.

 

We’ve talked before about the need to become like God in the way we love.

Today, we talk about the need to become like God in the way we forgive.

 

For when our forgiveness is without limit, it reflects the eternal mercy of God!

 

In Jesus’ parable today, the one servant who has just received mercy

for his inability to repay his debt, turns right around and withholds mercy

from someone else who is unable to repay him.

 

First of all, this parable should remind us of the indebtedness we all have to God. Sin left all of us with a debt ... we could never repay.

And so Jesus … in His great love … paid the debt to the Father for all of us.

 

So to this day, God, the Father of Mercy, delights in forgiving us for our personal sins and offenses and giving us a fresh start.    He does this over and over again!

 

In return, He wants us to forgive our neighbors, for their sins & offenses against us. How many times?       When can we stop forgiving? When will God be satisfied? Never!    Don’t keep track.      Decide to forgive always ... over and over again!  

 

How common it is for us Catholics go to Confession admitting of the same sins, over & over again ... expecting and receiving God’s forgiveness over & over again.

 

So, given that we are recipients of full and repetitive forgiveness for our sins ... how could we ever be unwilling to grant forgiveness to others who sin against us?

 

In Jesus’ parable today, the King is God, the huge debt He forgave for us was not only Original Sin, but also the killing His only begotten Son and all sin for all time.

 

All of us are His servants ... and we get to decide if we will be grateful servantswho grant forgiveness to others or wicked servants – who deny forgiveness to others.

 

Sirach asks,

“Can anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?” 

 

The answer is no!

 

Jesus emphasizes this in today’s Gospel when He says that His Father’s mercy will not be forthcoming, “unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

 

You see, if we think we’re ever going to be with God, we have to become like Him. We have to become God-like in love. We have to become God-like in mercy.

 

In our Responsorial Psalm we proclaimed,

“The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion.”

We need to act in the same way.

                   

Why did the King in the parable forgive the first servant’s debt?

 

Because when he heard the servant grovel before him promising the impossible ...

to repay his big debt, the King was moved with compassion in the depths of his being. So he ignores the fact that the man got himself into that miserable mess and

                    focuses only on the servant’s anguish ... and sets him free!

 

Now, why did the first servant not do the same for his fellow servant, who spoke the same words promising to repay his debt ... why didn’t he forgive him?

 

The literal translation of the Greek is, “He was not wanting to”.

You see, his emotions took over and blinded him to the debtor’s misery.

Basically, the first servant was lacking in compassion and so he inflicted pain ... having his servant thrown into prison, even though that couldn’t help repay the loan.

 

God, the King, is rich in compassion ... and He wants us to be rich in compassion too!

 

Imagine standing before Jesus the moment after you die and hearing Him say to you

the very words that the King said to the wicked Servant in the parable:

Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?”

 

Sorry … too late!

Too late to think, yeah well maybe I should have forgiven others as God forgave me.

 

Sirach warns: “Remember your last days and put enmity aside.”

We don’t know when our last days are coming. So we need to put anger aside and forgive those who have offended us from our hearts nowwhile there’s still time.

 

As always … having Free Will ... we get to decide.

We can hold onto our anger and be unforgiving ... or ...

We can be “God-like” and forgivefully and freely.

 

If we hold onto our anger, Sirach says:

“The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail.”

 

Whereas, if we let go of our anger and forgive as God asks, the Psalmist says,

“as far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us.”

 

Do you want God to remember your sins in detail?

Or do you want Him to have a lapse of memory ...

because He’s removed our sins so far from recollection?

 

We know what we must do.

We must be merciful to others … as God is merciful to us.

 

We admit to knowing this each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer and say,

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us!”

 

Do you realize what you’re asking?

 

Unlike the single mom in our opening story,

          who was just trying to consolidate her debt. 

 

in Confession you’re asking for much more!

 

you’re not asking for God to just consolidate the debt you have to sin ...

you’re asking God to forgive the whole debt that you’ve accumulated in your life!

 

It’s something that Almighty God can certainly do!

and in His great compassion ...

It’s something that Almighty God definitely wants to do!

 

 

 

 

 

And, God is calling us to model His compassion and forgiveness to the world.

 

A forgiveness that is complete, a forgiveness that is repeated over and over again.

 

Remember, Jesus never said you have to like your neighbor;

He said you have to love your neighbor.

 

As different as we are, there will always be things that offend us.

 

We’re never going to agree on everything, but we have to agree on one thing:

that the measure of mercy that we usewill be measured back to us.

 

God made us to live together in community.

We interact with many other people

people we like ... and people we don’t like.

 

To love everyone and forgive everyone as God does we need His grace, His Help!

 

So, let’s pray for the grace to forgive others for their offenses against us.

 

It’s is the way we make the full and repetitive mercy of God visible to the world.

 

It’s the way we receive the full and repetitive mercy of God for ourselves.  

 

Comments

There are no comments yet - be the first one to comment: