Homily for Twenty-fourth Sunday Cycle A, 9/13/26 - We can only forgive like God if we rely on him to help.

         Today we hear in our readings about the mercy and compassion of God in forgiving us. To forgive others who have harmed us is to be like God and this is not easy. Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts God had given us. He initiates forgiveness. We can choose to humbly ask for and accept his forgiveness.  In doing so it helps us to be like him and extend His mercy to others. I’d like to share a few stories about how forgiveness can impact our lives.

My first memory about compassion and forgiveness was when I was young boy. Does anyone here remember the toy airplanes made of balsa wood we used to get as kids? These toy airplanes didn’t always fly very well, but I had one that just really soared to great heights.  I wanted to show off my airplane, so I went across the street to play with my friend to show how high it could fly. I tossed it up in the air and a tailwind caused it to soar high enough to land on the second story roof of our neighbor’s house.  It was barely stuck, with half of it hanging over the edge of the roof’s gutter. A thought came to me that if I could throw a rock at the airplane, it would come tumbling back to the ground. Well, the first two rocks landed very close to the airplane and bounced off the roof. With precision aim I launched a third rock at the airplane and propelled it directly into the window just below the airplane & smashed it to smithereens. Struck with fear, I started running away as fast as I could to hide from being caught for this serious offence. After about 15 minutes my mom and her neighbor finally found me hiding in the bushes behind the neighbor’s house profusely sobbing. They were both so glad they found me and asked me what was wrong. Fearing the worst I fessed up that I had broken the window trying to rescue my toy airplane and said I was sorry for breaking the window. I thought for sure I was going to be severely punished, but that was not the case. My neighbor gave me a big hug and said she forgave me for breaking the window.  She told me her husband would be able to fix it.  Her compassionate response relieved my fears. I had a few extras chores assigned to me at home to make up for the broken window, but these helped me to appreciate my neighbor be so forgiving.

As an adult, I experienced an incident with several family members, who seriously hurt me and my immediate family. My initial response was to severely limit any interaction with these family members, to prevent any further harm from occurring.   This was needed for the safety of me and my family. But the one thing that I did not do, was to forgive the parties who had offended me. I held on to the anger from this experience, replaying the incident in my mind over a long period of time, and it had a negative effect on me. I was letting this incident create a wedge between myself and God, because I was not extending forgiveness.  My prayer life and relationship with God really suffered consequently. Some words from Sirach really resonated with me from this experience:

“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?”

I was nourishing my anger, feeding it with constant attention. By not forgiving others who had hurt me, I was hurting myself in letting it consume me.  The only way I was able to forgive was to ask the Lord for his help. The ways of the world told me I was justified in withholding forgiveness, because I was harmed by another. But through grace of the Holy Spirit, I was able to forgive others in my heart, and it finally gave me peace and renewed my relationship with God.  I really learned about the need about to forgive others through this experience.

        There was an article in this week’s Criterion, the Archdiocese weekly newspaper, about Jack Grandcolas, who lost his wife, Lauren and their unborn child in the plane that crashed in Shanksville, PA in the September 11 attacks 25 years ago. Jack really struggled with how a merciful God could allow his wife and child to be taken from him. He really questioned God and the plan he had for him since the 9/11 incident.  A few years after the incident, Jack attended a U2 concert and was a big fan of the lead singer Bono. Bono, who was raised by a Catholic father & a Protestant mother, and later in life developed a deep faith in God and Christ. Jack unexpectantly met Bono after the show and told him, “I worry that I may have screwed up in this life and mortgaged my opportunity to see my wife again” Bono’s response to Jack moved him, “You’ll see her again. I know it.  We all screw up in life.  That’s why God grants us forgiveness.  It’s his most powerful gift. Bono’s words changed Jack and his faith.  Jack wrote, “The night of the concert was a tribute to Lauren, but in a very important way it set me free, allowing me to be more forgiving of myself and my belief in God’s mercy.” This was a good example that we also need to forgive ourselves for the times we have hurt others and turned from God. 

In the Gospel today Peter asks Jesus if forgiving seven times is enough. Jesus responds, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Jesus is telling Peter; to be like God,

our mercy should have no limits. The parable that Jesus told us about the servant who was forgiven but did not forgive the servant who owed him much less, reminds us that our mercy needs like the mercy God extends to us. How can we become loving, compassionate, and merciful like God? On our own, it’s impossible. But, by relying on God to help us, we can become forgiving like him.

Each time we come Mass, we have a reminder of the forgiveness that God offers each of us. At the beginning of Mass, we recall when we have failed to love God and our neighbor and to ask God for his forgiveness. We may recite a general confession, or we may ask for the Lord’s forgiveness by praying: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. After this the priest says, “May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life” At each Mass we call on God mercy, we listen to forgiveness he gives us, and with the grace of the sacraments it helps us to forgive others as He has us. As we continue with the Eucharist, pray that the grace to help us to change our hearts to be loving, merciful and compassion as He is.

Twenty second Sunday Ordinary Time - Cycle A, Take up our cross and unite our sacrifices with Jesus

In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ impression of Peter is a drastic turnabout, when says, “Get behind me Satan, you are an obstacle to me.” What a change from last week, when we heard Jesus tell Peter,  “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.  And so, I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”  Peter goes from being the foundation of the Church, to a stumbling block. How can this be?  Jesus has chosen Peter to lead his Church, and he probably knew that Peter had some rough edges that needed polishing. Peter has a way to go to fully understand who Jesus is, both fully human and fully divine.

This is the first time in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus reveals his death to his disciples, and that he would be raised after three days. Peter thought Jesus was going to be the long-awaited Messiah who was going to save the Jewish people by conquering the Romans through worldly power.  But Jesus was teaching the disciples that he would be a Messiah who would  conquer the world through sacrificial love in giving his life on the cross. So, when Peter responded to the revelation of Jesus death, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  He needs some correction in understanding the type of Messiah that Jesus was.

To be Jesus’ disciple Peter would need to deny himself and take up his cross to follow him. Taking up his cross would have seemed strange for Peter to hear, as it was the instrument of torture that the Romans use to control the people. This wouldn’t make sense to Peter in his human reason. He needed to see the death of Jesus through the divine lens of a suffering servant establishing a new covenant through sacrificial love of giving up his life for all of us.

What do I mean by a new covenant? God had established covenants with the Jewish people before, through Noah, Abraham, and Moses.  A covenant is a special relationship entered in between persons, in this case the people of Israel and God, where they pledge to give themselves fully, faithfully, and forever, like a marriage, until death do us part. When covenants were entered into in the Old Testament an animal was sacrificed to God as symbol of what would happen if the covenant was broken. God always kept his covenant, but the Jewish people did not keep theirs, as they turned to worship other gods.  Jesus became human to to restore the covenant once and for all with humanity in a new way, by offering his life as the ultimate sacrifice. He takes on the sin of humanity, so we no longer have suffer the consequence if we don’t keep the covenant.  We can now be restored to our relationship with God when we sin through the new covenant established by Jesus through the Church and the Sacraments.

So, Jesus is teaching his disciples that he is a Messiah who is going to lead them to God’s eternal glory, where they will live forever with him in heaven.  The way they will get there, is through the cross. St. Rose of Lima said, “apart from the cross, there is no ladder that will get us to heaven.” Jesus teaches his disciples in taking up their cross, they will find their life, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

So how do we take up the cross in our own lives? There are some ways we can intentionally sacrifice by giving our time, talents, and treasure to serve others.  One I just did yesterday is giving blood.  I used to be extremely scared of needles, but I united my fear with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and got the courage to now give blood regularly. I also visit inmates in the Heritage Trail Correction Facility to provide a communion service monthly. Some examples of other ways we sacrifice for others is by visiting them in a care facility.   Many of us have friends or relatives, who are in full time care, and a visit will really lift their spirits.   There are many other activities that we can do by sacrificing over what we would prefer to be doing. But by sacrificing for other we may find it’s what we prefer to do as it brings us closer to Christ.

But we don’t necessarily need to look for sacrifices.  We can embrace those that come up in our lives as our own cross.  We may be suffering from an illness, or a loved one may be and we become their caregiver.   We may have a broken relationship with a family member that causes us to despair. When we encounter these, it may seem unfair that we are going through difficulties and we may be angry at God. We don’t want to experience pain or suffering and desire for God to take it away. But if we enter our suffering united with Jesus, it can give us some meaning because he’s been there too. I recently read a reflection by Vaneetha Rendal Reether that expresses this well: So where can you identify with Jesus in your suffering? If you have ever been betrayed by a friend, someone you loved and trusted, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering. Or if you have ever begged God to remove your anguish, and God denied your desperate request, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering. Or if you have experienced tormenting, all-consuming physical pain with no relief, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering. Suffering brings an intimacy with God, a mysterious fellowship that cannot be captured by words.

To give us hope, when need to keep in mind that the other side of suffering, is resurrection.We may still bear the scars to remind us of what we went through, but so does the resurrected Jesus in the scars on his hands, feet, and side. He accompanied us and we’ve grown closer to him.

As we continue, please remember the Mass is a sacrifice, where Jesus is made present to us through his suffering death on the cross. The priest offers up the bread

and wine, which become Christ’s Body and Blood, sacrificed and presented to God the Father. In the Mass Christ is also resurrected to new life.

The Eucharist that we receive spiritually nourishes us through the graces to help us endure suffering in our life. We are not alone.  Jesus has been there too and wants us to be united with him through our crosses and raised with him when we get through them in this life and in eternal life to come.