Depth of Our Debts
Greetings on this the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: SIR 27:30—28:7; PS 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12; ROM 14:7-9; MT 18:21-35
Note: A/C fixed in Church. I did not preach this weekend. So I can take certain liberties in these homiletic notes. Next Sunday 9 AM, 20th September I will preach on the livestream. It happens to be the Gospel reading of my first homily. I wonder how 9 years later the context has changed. We shall see.
Be Holy
There can be no confusion as to the direct and specific teaching Jesus is applying in this analogy.
There also is the necessity to carefully express the analogy of the faith and the Tradition of the Church as taught by the Church (Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis).
We can say clearly that forgiveness is a central nature to the Divine and is a required and acquired nature by baptism that we are to apply in our Christian life.
We forgive that which is trivial in relation to the size of the eternal debt sin has earned us. There can be no confusion as to the scales applied in this analogy.
Forgiving in the way of the Divine requires… divine assistance. There is no other way. We must bring our gift of un-forgiveness to the Lord that He might help us transform this into true forgiveness.
Here then we understand we are made in the image of God and we are called to the likeness of God. The first is an essential truth. The second a decision.
There is NO peace in this life without peace among brothers.
Pope Pius XII further wrote in Divino Afflante Spiritu which most chillingly was the day before Hitler issued Directive No. 7, Preparations for Attack in the West in 1939.
In this encyclical, Pope Pius XII reflecting on the peace accord resulting from the First World War and, unknown to His Holiness, the midwife of the Second World War:
81. No, Venerable Brethren, safety does not come to peoples from external means,
from the sword which can impose conditions of peace but does not create peace.
Forces that are to renew the face of the earth should proceed from within, from the spirit.
Pandemic Debt
We are indebted to one another on so many levels. Your sin, my sin and social sin.
This common human problem, sin, is paired with this common human problem, infection.
At this point there is no disconnecting them. We can try. We can blame China.
But we wind up in the same place. A problem that requires cooperation and mutual forgiveness.
Meanwhile we are the causal factor for the inattention to the effects of our own inaction and our lack of attentiveness to the situation among the family of nations.
Have Pity
Pity = the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of other.
In our context not merely a feeling but a call to action. You see a feeling without action is not a true feeling but a simple transient state of emotion.
Forgive
among the Family of Nations
https://gcap.global/news/a-debt-jubilee-to-tackle-the-covid-19-health-and-economic-crisis/
Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry
