God's mercy is amazing

24^th Sunday of OT year A 2017:

I learned long ago that I can’t say it better than Jesus.  So will my heavenly Father do to you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.  Jesus’ message is so clear: if we want to be forgiven, we need to forgive.  I can’t really improve on the message.

But, I do want to talk a little bit about this passage.  This is one of my favorite passages, but this passage is also a big pet peeve of mine.  I once had to work on this in my Greek class and it was really eye opening for me.  Our translation says that the first servant owed a huge amount and the second servant owes a much smaller amount.  When you hear that, what kind of dollar amount would you put on it?  Huge amount: 100?  1000? 1,000,000?  The smaller amount?  5 bucks?  But, the text actually says that the first servant owed 10,000 talents and the second one 100 denarii.  I think our bible translator decided to interpret these numbers because we aren’t generally aware of these amounts.  But, if we study these amounts a little bit it really changes the gravity of this passage.

The first servant owes the master 10,000 talents.  How much is a talent?  There are a lot of debates out there about a talent.  But, a pretty good estimate would be the amount of money a laborer would make in a whole year.  So, this man owes 10,000 talents.  Say 20k per talent, that’s 200 million dollars.  Saturday’s powerball is worth 132 million.  So you could hit that and still be 68 million dollars short. 

This homily is not about money.  But, just let the sheer enormity of the amount sink in a little bit.  How much does this guy owe?  More than anyone can possible imagine.  The same is true for us.  We owe God more than we can possibly imagine.  It’s impossible to pay back God for his amazing generosity.  He has given us life, breath, forgiveness, faith, sacraments, our families, our friends, our jobs, and on and on.  Nothing we can do can repay the debt.  That’s why we ask God for forgiveness.  We know we can’t pay him back.  We ask him for his love.

I think the much smaller amount is interesting too.  The fellow servant owes the other 100 denarii.  A denarius was about how much a person made working for one full day.  So to put it into modern terms we are talking about $50.  So 100 denarii is like $5000.  Now, this is clearly much less than the 200 million.  But, it’s still substantial. 

I found this to be just as important to me.  Jesus encourages us to forgive not just small matters, but big matters as well.  5000 is not a small amount of money to me.  And the offenses that other inflict upon us might not seem small.  But, Jesus is still encouraging us to be forgiving.

I found that studying the actual amounts listed in this parable makes the story so much more dramatic.  The stakes are large.  Forgiveness is no small thing.  It’s huge.

But, forgiveness is not easy.  I mean there is a reason why Jesus has to talk about forgiveness so much.  That’s because forgiveness is really hard.  If you find yourself struggling with forgiveness, spend some time with this parable.  Recognize your own debt to God.  Go to confession and have your own sins forgiven.  Ask those whom you have offended for forgiveness.  The more you know and experience forgiveness in your own life, the more you will be able to share forgiveness with others.

Let the faith live loudly within us

23^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A 2017:

We get an interesting gospel this week for our reflection.  Jesus is giving us some down to earth concrete suggestions on how to deal with some daily issues and problems.  For example, what do you do when there is division or disagreement within the community?  What do you do when someone sins against you?

This is down-to-earth practical advice.  And that got me thinking a little bit.  One of the problems what we face in trying to live out our faith in these modern times is the problem of thinking about faith and religion as something that shouldn’t affect our practical down-to-earth lives.  I’m sure no one here would literally say: My faith will not affect my daily life.  But, our culture really sets things up in such a way that we are discouraged from living out our faith in the public square.  It’s perfectly fine to be a Catholic, to be a Christian; but, it better not affect how we vote, how we participate in civil government, how we carry out our civil responsibilities.  How many times do we hear: “personally I’m opposed to something, but I won’t let my faith tell other people what to do.”  This leads to a separation between our life of faith and our daily lives which can really be problematic.  Our faith is not a part of our lives, it is a part of everything in our lives.  We should always ask Christ for guidance in all our actions and decisions. 

Someone sent me a clip this week of Senator Diane Feinstein who was questioning Amy Barrett, who was nominated for an appeals court position.  The Senator says: when reading your writings and speeches you get the sense that the dogma lives loudly within you, which is a concern.”  Wow.  What prejudice!  This made me think two things.  First, could we really say “the dogma lives loudly in me.”  That’s one of the best compliments anyone could every give me or any Catholic.  I really hope it lives loudly in me.  Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God.  I’m one of his followers, his believers.  I hope that his truth lives loudly in me.  Second, what kind of weird world do we live in that having the faith live loudly inside of us is a “concern.”

We all need to recognize that our culture is subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, trying to get us to divorce our life of faith from our daily lives.  That’s why it’s important for us to be committed to Christ every day of our lives. 

Let our minds be transformed by Christ

What a remarkable turn of events!  In two weeks we get to hear two conversations between Jesus and St. Peter.  In both of these conversations, Jesus bestows a name upon Peter.  Last week, Jesus said: Blessed are you Simon Son of John.  You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.  This week: Get behind me Satan.  Kind of hard to believe isn’t it.  Last week he is the rock of the Church, this week he is Satan, an obstacle to Christ and his mission to save us by his death and resurrection.

What does St. Peter do wrong here?  Jesus predicts his passion on the cross, and Peter basically says: God forbid something bad should happen to you Jesus.  I don’t think that’s the worst statement ever is it?  If a friend came up to me and said: I’m going to be murdered in a horrible way, I might be tempted to say: God forbid that should happen to you.  So, the statement itself isn’t horrible.  Rather, Jesus chides Peter because of the state of his mind: you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.  This is the real crux of the matter.  Last week we hear that Peter believes with all his heart that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God.  But, he hasn’t changed his mind yet, he is still thinking as human beings do.  Sometimes when we think about our faith in Christ we talk about it in terms of the heart: we want to have our hearts set on Christ.  But, we need our minds to be set on Christ too.

St. Paul is saying something similar to the Romans in our second reading.  He states: be transformed by the renewal of your minds, then you can discern the will of God.  Isn’t this basically what Jesus says to Peter?  And if St. Peter needed constant renewal and transformation of his mind, then of course we will need it too.

But, this is no easy task.  How many times a day do we fail to think like Christ?  How many times a day do we think like human beings and not like God?  Our thoughts can be filled with hatred, jealousy, impurity, un-forgiveness.  How many of us can say that we find these thoughts helpful?  I know I don’t. 

Yet, so often, and I know this is true for me, our thoughts can be focused on the human, focused on negatives and yet we aren’t even aware.  Think about Peter.  He’s just saying: hey Jesus, don’t die, we like you.  And yet, Jesus does him a great service by pointing out the error of his way of thinking.  Immediately after pointing out his error, Jesus goes on to teach Peter the right way to think: whoever wishes to follow me must deny himself and pick up his cross.  We all know that St Peter does that at the end of his life.  So, that transformation took place in him because of the patient guidance of Christ.

The same will be true for us if we open our hearts and our minds to Christ.  I think a great prayer you could say every day would be something like this: Dear Lord, when I start thinking as humans do and not as you do, please call me out just like you did to St. Peter.  Please teach me and guide me.  Perform the transformation of my mind so that I will indeed know your will in my life and have the courage to follow it.

I’m sure none of us wants Jesus to say: get behind me Satan…  But, it was through the guidance of Christ that Peter became St. Peter.  The same can happen for us by God’s grace if we are open to the guidance the Christ.  I think we often pray that God would help transform our hard hearts, but today we also help us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.