TUESDAY HOMILY: The Lavishness of God's Mercy and Ours

By Fr. Roger J. Landry
3/5/2013
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Jesus teaches us today how rich in mercy God has been toward us and how merciful we are called to be in return.

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FALL RIVER, MA (Catholic Online). One of the most difficult aspects of living the Catholic faith is the teaching about loving even our enemies and forgiving those who repeatedly wrong us, hate us and persecute us. When people hurt us, we think it's magnanimous and generous when we give them a second chance. If we forgive them yet again, we think we're ready for canonization. But Jesus' standards for us are higher. He wants us to become as merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful - and thanks be to God, God gives us more than one or two spiritual mulligans.

In today's Gospel, St. Peter asks Jesus, "If my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?" He volunteers a figure astronomical by our standards today. "Seven times?," he says, which would be our equivalent of giving someone an eighth chance.

Jesus, taking advantage of the symbolic significance of the number seven in Hebrew, which symbolizes perfection, responds that Peter must forgive not just seven times, but seventy-seven times. If taken literally he would have to give someone a "seventy-eighth chance." But in Hebrew, the expression Jesus uses means "infinitely." He says Peter must forgive every time a brother or sister wrongs him.

And what Jesus says to Peter, he also says to us. We, too, must never refuse forgiveness to anyone who has wronged us - even and especially those who have really wounded us deeply. We must forgive fathers and mothers who have hurt us when we were younger, husbands and wives who have betrayed us, friends who have deceived us, priests or nuns who have scandalized us, assailants who have attacked us, and terrorists who have mercilessly killed those closest to us.

Jesus tells us why we must do this by means of the parable he gives us, which I've always found among his most powerful. He mentions two people who need to have their debts cancelled. The first owes 10,000 talents. A talent was 6,000 days wages. Therefore, this person owed 60 million days of work - something that would take him 164,000 years to pay off. If we want to quantify it in today's money and just assumed the person made $12.50 an hour or $100/day, he would owe the equivalent of 6 billion dollars.

Knowing that he and his whole family would be thrown into prison, he went in to the Master and begged, ridiculously, time to pay back the unpayable sum, as if he would live to be 165,000 years old and slowly become a multi-billionaire! The Master, moved with compassion, cancelled the debt in its entirety. The debtor had essentially received his life back.

But he went out and met a man who owed him 100 denarii, or 100 days wages. Again, if a person was making $100 a day, this would be the equivalent of $10,000, which could be paid off in just over three months. But when he fell to his knees and begged for time to repay the debt - just as the first debtor had done - the one who had been forgiven the $6 billion had no mercy at all, even though the $10,000 he had lent had doubtless come from the billions he had himself borrowed. His lack of compassion cost him everything: when the servants of the billionaire Master told their boss, he revoked his mercy and threw the one who owed him into prison until he would pay back every last penny, which, because of the amount owed, was an impossible task.

What's the relevance for us in the Year of Faith? We owe God far more than $6 billion. We're always debtors, not creditors, in the forgiveness department. God the Father did not write off our debt, but sent his Son to pay for the debt with his own body and blood on the Cross. Our sins - even every single venial sin - have incurred an infinite debt that Christ needed to pay. Since we have received his forgiveness in baptism and in the sacrament of reconciliation, we are called to go out likewise and forgive others their much smaller debts to us, because nothing anyone could do to us - even if he or she were to torture us or kill those closest to us - amounts to what we've done to the Son of God made man through our sins.

This is a very important point for us to get. Very often we can think our sins are light matter. "So I say a few swears," we can say to ourselves. "That's not a big deal." We can have very little compunction if we miss Mass on a Sunday or fail to be charitable, or consent to some impure thoughts, or be dishonest on our taxes. But every sin we've committed - even being impatient with others - makes us murderers of the Son of God, because Jesus had to die to forgive even our least venial sin.

This is a hard truth to bear, and I know there will be some reader of this article who will think that I must be exaggerating. I'm not. That's how horrible our sins are. Our sins led to Jesus' brutal torture and murder.

If we stopped there, it would be hard for us not to feel infinitely miserable. But God loved us so much that he counted it a ...

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1 - 4 of 4 Comments

Paul-Emile Leray
2 months ago
This is a very well written and insightful article. There is a lot of confusion present in this world with the following words (often due to poor teaching and urban legends, too often repeated slogans such as "forgive and forget"; that one really irritates me): forgiveness, justice, mercy, and reconciliation. Thank you for specificity, clarity, and having the courage to debunk some popular myths and slogans. It often produces even more guilt, often false guilt, when people say "forgive and forget". My reply? "Only people with bad memories forget". If people forgot everything, they would risk never learning from mistakes of the past. A bully would therefore likely continue trampling on that poor soft-hearted soul. I know, it happened often to me! Much of it was because of thinking that Christianity was all about being nice, kind, forgiving, and peaceful at all costs. Let us remember that Jesus had a toughness to him as well. He was very pointed at times with the Pharisees and whoever tried deceiving him. Whenever the Pharisees tried laying traps for Jesus, we often can see a no-nonsense 'just' toughness to the character and personality of Jesus. Being Christian does not mean being a door-mat for and with no 'reason' present. Forgiveness with no sense of justice present (not necessarily always explicitly, but implicit justice properly understood) risks in seeing many poor kind humble soft-hearted souls being trampled on incessantly by bullies. Stand up to bullies and psychotic like manipulators who would do practically anything to achieve their goals. Understanding mercy also presupposes a certain level of wisdom, does it not? Being wise, presupposes a certain level of awareness in seeing the difference between forgiveness, mercy, justice, and the gift of reconciliation. This article is excellent. How many people do you know who bully and whine, complain, moan and belittle; then they wrap it all up with "I love you". Really? Then, GROW UP! You see? Without justice, it simply gives the immature soul a perceived green light to continue doing it all over again. A 'figurative bamboo' across the head, heart, spirit, soul; of bullies and dangerous manipulators; is necessary at times. I now realize that sins of omission are often (perhaps 'sometimes' is more accurate) even more dangerous than sins of commission. Perhaps this is why some say "all it takes for evil to prevail is for a few good men to do nothing". There are some Catholics who have become so sheepish, that some Jesuits insist they stand up to receive communion instead of adopting a grovelling type of behavior. Jesus needs soft souls, but soft as in the bamboo, not soft as in mud that simply gets spread out all over the place and carried around after having been trampled upon by car tires. I hate to say it, but many Catholic leaders and parents, teachers, are NOT teaching what an accurate picture of Christianity looks like. It is about peace and love, but it is not all about only peace in the "let's all agree and be like-minded at all costs" type of perception that is often present in society. Being peaceful does not mean being agreeable at all costs. (I hate to admit it, but I was nice to the point of being stupid (but not naive) out of exaggerated fear due to an incomplete understanding of what peace and love were all about; therefore naive on that issue, in the sense of not seeing how I could avoid being manipulated without feeling guilty for standing up for myself) Peace necessitates some degree of justice, not necessarily explicit but certainly implicit. And love means being very honest, truthful, as well. And so, if someone is being a jerk then stand up to it either directly or indirectly in a peaceful manner. Do not feel guilty for acknowledging truth, otherwise the denial leads to a form of escapism that becomes psychologically intolerable at times. Anyhow, perhaps this is enough for now. If I have misunderstood, I stand to be corrected. If these words can help some fellow beings out there, then good! There are plenty of good people out there who suffer needlessly. They are paralyzed through over-analysis. The evil spirit has them sinning through omission. Notice St. Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, writes about this: sins of commission and sins of omission and some explanation and natures of each type. This can be very useful to people. It certainly was to me. Christianity is not only about getting along and being agreeable at all costs. How can one expect a Mother Teresa type to be best buddies and laughing in full joy with a known terrorist who has no intention of ever changing his or her ways? Jesus did not get along well with everyone. This is to be noted. He was not a politician on a political campaign trail, he was not a demagogue, he was not a salesman saying and doing everything and anything in the name of selling a product. My goodness, how much energy gets wasted in the Christian community because people are paralyzed? Imagine how much more good we would all do if we were all more closely aligned with accurate road maps? Well, this is enough for this post. If these words help anyone, it is for this purpose that I write them and so I am happy if anything may have helped. With some, sins of commission are the main focus. With highly sensitive and conscientious souls sins of omission at times due to 'paralysis through over analysis' (and the roots as to why) need to be more closely discerned. This article was excellent in focussing on some key words and highlighting some differences, with clarity, between them. A very useful article, for many, I think. One final set of closely linked points, since this writer has clearly ignited me. Aristotle, a few centuries before Jesus, was being asked to participate in dialogues at a very young age. Notice Jesus was being listened to when he was only 12, perhaps much younger as well. Notice Plato, just before Aristotle in chronological order, while having political aspirations in his youth soon discerned that being a philosopher and political philosopher would (in his case) do more good for society given the intrinsic nature of politics itself. Age and wisdom are not walking along parallel lines with one another, along the path called life. Some 20 year olds have more wisdom than some who are 80. It is simply a what? Fact. Honest observation, seeing reality as it is, can easily confirm the last few lines as being true. This writer has added some fuel to the fire, in the good sense, so I thank him. 5 books, for anyone interested with some discipline to read during this Lenten season, as my gift to the readers of this fine website (in random order of importance):
1. One Minute Wisdom (Tony de Mello, S.J.)
2. Do not fear! (Carlos G. Valles, S.J.)
3. Jesus and Paul (Jerome Murphy-O'Connor)
4. Here and Now (Henri J.M. Nouwen)
5. Much Ado About Everything (Peter Milward, S.J.)
Paul-Emile Leray
G.G. a prolife Catholic
2 months ago

Dear LORD please be merciful to Barack Obama and his administration and be merciful to
me too...
robertburford
2 months ago
I have a long way to go
musaka
2 months ago
good article. continue blessing us with this spiritual food.

kind regards,

musaka

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