September 11, 2011 - Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading - 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.
redeems your life from destruction, he 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 Rom 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.
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."
Reflection
Although it may seem as though these readings were selected deliberately to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, their timing is entirely Providential. By the grace of God, these just so happen to be the ordinarily prescribed passages for Cycle A of the Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, and they could not be more pertinent to us as we mourn and remember the tragic loss of life some ten years ago.
Both the first reading, from the Book of Sirach, and the Gospel passage from Matthew, exhort us to relinquish our tenacious grip on anger and to allow the healing power of forgiveness to enter into our hearts. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had warned his disciples against cultivating grudges (Mat 5:21). “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry* with his brother will be liable to judgment.”
As discussed previously in these pages, there were two Greek words for “anger” that the evangelist could have employed, and the one he uses here does not refer to the natural, visceral outrage we feel when we witness an injustice or crime. Rather, the word Jesus chooses denotes a much deeper, more ingrained, more deliberately cultivated form of anger. It is the sort that we allow to take root in our heart, that we return to regularly, allowing it to fester and calcify. Eventually, this sort of hurt in our hearts seeps into other parts of our body and permeates our inter-personal relationships, becoming toxic to our own health and poisonous to our interactions with others.
Here again, we see Jesus delineating the dangers of refusing forgiveness. It is impossible to be a wholly-flourishing person if we carry around this sort of anger in our hearts, no matter what level of success we attain in other areas, be it academic awards, professional achievement, or athletic/artistic accomplishment. Eventually, jealousy, anger, resentment, and bitterness will adulterate even those good things, lending them an acrid and bitter taste.
Grudges do not harm the other person; they afflict us. Grudges do nothing to restore justice to the external cosmos; they merely prevent the return of harmony to our inner selves. No one, in the history of humankind, has ever recovered from surgery by ripping open the scab anew each day, and no one, in the long story of our race, has ever healed from anger by returning to it regularly with renewed vigor and intentionality.
Carrying around enmity in our hearts towards grade school classmates who teased us does nothing to take away those experiences. Giving the silent treatment to a housemate who consistently fails to wash the dishes or uses up the last of the milk or refuses to pay her share of the cable bill because she “hardly ever watches TV,” will not, in any way, help us to create justice in the household. It’ll only make us miserable.
So what do we do? How do we avoid wrath and anger? How do we forgive seventy times seven times… and then seventy after that? Key to learning how to forgive is understanding how the anger gets there in the first place.
All anger; all bitterness; all resentment can be reduced to a combination of fear, insecurity, and hurt. Nearly everyone who mistreats another, be it a suicide bomber in Gaza or an abusive husband in Detroit, does so out of some deep-seated, unresolved hurt of his/her own. Ordinary peasants who cannot afford to feed their families nor send their children to school are caused immense hurt when they see people from other nations enjoying those gifts cavalierly, perhaps even taking them for granted. This resentment increases when it is perceived that another country’s policies contribute directly—or even cause—the conditions of poverty and injustice being experienced every day.
Similarly, so much of the violence we inflict on one another, be it the teasing of middle school bullies; the gossiping of a group of sorority girls; or the arguments of a family gathering… boils down to insecurity, past hurt, and fear. If we can first recognize that those hurting us are hurting themselves, and it is this unaddressed hurt that is in fact leading them to lash out at us, it may be easier for us to forgive.
And yet, forgiveness is not a snap-of-the-fingers sort of thing. The author of SIrach is importuning the people Israel not to cling to wrath and desire vengeance, and yet this is certainly not a constant hymn throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Dozens of Psalms recount the cries of that same people Israel that God bring down holy destruction upon enemies and wreak righteous damnation upon those who have hurt them. Forgiveness is a process. And at various stages of both our personal psycho-spiritual development and our collective national progress, we will be at different points.
While we must be constant in our aspiring to live Christ-like lives, and therefore to embody His call to forgive seventy times seven times, we must also be patient with our progress and recognize that such forgiveness will not always come easily nor quickly. When the wound is still raw, and the pain still lingering, it will be far more difficult for us to forgive; rather than hastily declare our half-developed forgiveness, it may be an opportunity for us to acknowledge that we are not, in fact, quite there yet. That we are not, if we are honest, totally ready to forgive, and therefore—and this is most important—to pray earnestly for the grace of God to make us more ready. The old adages, “time heals all wounds,” and “to err is human; to forgive divine,” are both deeply insightful and continually relevant. Forgiveness—true, authentic forgiveness—is unquestionably the domain of the Divine, and it is only by explicitly seeking such a capacity through the sanctifying power of grace, that it will be made possible.
We find ourselves ten years removed from a moment of heinous inhumanity, and as we consider this Sunday’s selections from Sirach and Matthew, we are presented with an opportunity: do we decide to ask God for the grace to forgive, and therefore to heal? Or do we harbor this animosity in our hearts towards those who perpetrated violence upon us? But this moment is not a unique one, nor this opportunity exceptional—we are presented with precisely this chance every single time we suffer the dehumanizing effects of sin and violence on a personal level and must decide whether or not to cultivate anger, bitterness, or resentment towards the person who hurt us. By the grace of God, let us hope we choose healing!
Questions for Reflection
1) Do you remember how you felt on September 11, 2001? What sorts of emotions did you experience? What sorts of thoughts went through your head? How have those feelings and thoughts evolved over the past decade? How do you feel in the present moment?
2) Think of some of the moments in your life when you’ve been most hurt. Why do you think the other person/people acted that way? Can you recognize any hurt, fear, or insecurity in that other person’s heart that may have contributed to him/her lashing out at you?
3) Think of a time when you, yourself, have hurt someone else. Did you receive forgiveness? (Did you ask for it?) If you did, what did that feel like, and how did it affect your relationship with the other person? If you have not received forgiveness, what does that feel like?
4) Are there any hurts in your current life that you are struggling to forgive, right now, today, in the present moment? Why is this particular hurt so challenging to forgive? How do today’s readings speak to you?
