Homily

Fr. Paul Ward

St. Paul’s, Grosse Pointe, Sunday, September 11, 2005

Twenty-Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Forgiveness of One Another, in Imitation of God

When I was assigned to Our Lady of Refuge Parish in Orchard Lake for my seminary internship, I remember a good friend, Tom Fowler, who was commenting about how happy his long marriage has been. He said the secret was in learning to say, “I’m sorry; you were right, and I was wrong.” I’m sure much, much more went into a marriage that had persevered – I think – more than four decades, but certainly what he said is true. He found peace, strength and love in the forgiveness with which he and his life habitually lived. What a great achievement.

So today we are challenged by Jesus Christ himself: forgive your brother from your heart, says the Lord. Let us look at the Gospel, then at the passage we read from Sirach, to find light and strength to achieve what the Lord asks from us.

The Gospel passage is quite clear: there is a man with a  huge debt to pay, yet another man with a smaller debt owes the money to the first man. The man with the huge debt obtained forgiveness, but he could not forgive the other man who owed him a small amount. The more guilty forgave less. He demanded forgiveness, but he didn’t give it. The hypocrite! He reminds me of two oranges sitting on a table, and the first turns to the other and says, “I don’t like your color.” Or of an elephant that would turn to a dog and complain, “You weigh too much.” There is nothing, nothing we can’t forgive, for God himself, against whose infinite love our sins are infinitely offensive, has forgiven us everything, if we only ask his pardon.

In Sirach, the sin of anger is discussed. Now, anger is also a passion: there is the sin of anger, and the passion of anger. We have many passions: joy, sorrow, fear, love, anger, and so on. They all have a place in life, and are meant to be guided by our reason to bring us to what is good. Yet sometimes this passion of anger gets out of hand. Instead of bringing us to do good – for example, a man who defends his wife from an attacker is filled with righteous anger – it brings us not to do good, but to do evil to others. So we are angry, and we gossip about others, we slander them, we insult and belittle them, we find ways to take revenge, and even we allow ourselves sometimes to do them physical violence when there is nothing close to a real need to do so. When your anger seeks to bring evil upon another and not good, that will tell you whether your anger is simply the passion doing what it is meant to do, or whether it is a sin requiring confession and sacramental absolution.

And so it is in our own lives that we frequently find ourselves bothered by others. The things they say, the way they say them; perhaps we are the ones insulted or ripped off; their mannerisms, their appearance. Maybe right now in Church you’re sitting near someone who has unpleasant body odor or breath. Maybe someone we deal with frequently is simply unintelligent and does and says foolish things, and this drives us crazy. These small examples show us that frequently we can allow ourselves to be bothered by others. Just because we find ourselves bothered is no reason to cast our hands in the air and say, “How can I ever attain the height of perfection Jesus invites me to?” All it takes is humility. Yes, with the grace of God, we can be forgiving and kind people.

The first thing we have to do is recognize our own sinfulness, and, besides our sins, also our countless defects even when these aren’t sinful. I’m astonished when, as a priest, I repeatedly encourage the faithful to attend frequent confession, and, instead of being grateful for the encouragement to obtain such splendid graces, a small number get positively offended. It is as if they wish to scream at me, “How dare you say I’m a sinner.” Well, I got news for you: I’m a sinner, the first one in line for those who need to ask for forgiveness; and I have further news for you: you’re a sinner, too. Those who have never committed sin have no need for Catholicism or for God; they have found their salvation in themselves. The rest of us need God’s love. And this is one of many subterfuges we construe for ourselves to hide from humility, when humility comes looking for us. Everyone else is a sinner, not me. Everyone else is wrong, I’m always right. Everyone else has an inferior intelligence to me. Everyone else can’t do things right, except me. Oh, if only I ran the world…

Some ladies in our parish and in neighboring parishes form groups of prayer called the Cenacle. When visiting a cenacle recently, one of the ladies said that she was suffering from this type of pride – and I only admire her for having the honesty to admit it, for we all suffer from pride to some degree, and in some manner or other – when one day she was praying the Hail Mary, and she came to the line, “…pray for us sinners, …” She stopped and realized that she was so eager to pray for “all those sinners out there,” failing to pray for the sinner who was saying the prayer. And for her great humility, I assure you and am witness, she is soaring into great heights of the spiritual life, and I think she doesn’t even realize how much spiritual progress she has made in her life.

So here’s the question: Do you want to be kind to others? Do you want to be a good person? Do you want your sins to be forgiven? Then forgive. No, don’t justify what’s evil; indeed, some of you, because you are parents, employers, directors, heads of departments, leaders in one way or another, you have the office in life to address things when they’re wrong. Don’t call evil good, ever! Fix what’s wrong, but then forgive the sinner. And if you really want to fly to high spiritual heights, don’t stop at “I forgive you,” but after you have done so, continue only then to say, “I’m sorry.”

May the Lord Jesus, the Word through whom all things were made, give us the strength to admit our own faults, to forgive others unconditionally, and so imitate Himself, who, on the Cross, did not reproach us, but prayed, “Father, forgive them.”