Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time A




Readers, you must forgive me this week. I find it hard to write anything. The topic is too big, too obvious, too complex and too simple.

The message of the gospel story is plain as day. One commentator warns, though, that we are not to take the “king” as equivalent to God our Father.

"...the key to interpreting his message correctly is to understand how a parable is meant to be read. We are accustomed to learning (and teaching) through "edifying stories." In this kind of story the characters are either "good" or "bad"; we are meant to imitate the good ones and avoid being like the bad. It is always wrong to read a parable like that. We find that we identify one of the characters with God and end up with a strange God, one who tortures those who don't forgive their enemies, burns the cities of those who do not accept his wedding invitation, closes the door on the bridesmaids who come late for the wedding feast, and so forth. Many Christians have developed warped ideas of God as a result of reading Jesus' parables in this way. [Note: I find myself wondering whether the sting in the tail (the last sentence, vs. 35 ) might not be a later addition by some overzealous preacher. T.L.]

He goes on to show how there is a whole web of bondage that needs to be released through the forgoing even of our rightful claims:
The parable then makes us reflect on oppression, understood quite correctly as being indebted. What a terrible thing oppression is! It keeps everyone in bondage - the oppressed and the oppressors alike. It isn't God who keeps us in bondage, but we ourselves, and the parable tells us that we will continue in this bondage, "handed over to torturers", unless someone makes a breakthrough and replaces meanness with generosity of spirit, the spirit of forgiveness, permanent and unconditional, "from our hearts."

This whole commentary is well worth reading:
 Michel DeVerteuil ww.w.catholicireland.net/liturgysacraments/sunday-homily-resources-year-a


It seems to me that the story just offers one more reason to be forgiving, and not even the main one. Forgiveness softens the heart, as refusal to forgive hardens it. So forgiveness is as necessary for health in mind and spirit, and in society, as salt is necessary for health in the body. 

When we ask questions about forgiveness in our culture, the situation is far from clear. In a family a young adult might be told he/she doesn't have to repay a loan if they can't manage it, but that is not the way financial doings are regulated in society. Debts have to be paid, or property is confiscated: no two ways about it. In criminal proceedings, justice the goal - to restore right balance in society by punishing the offender. Leniency and rehabilitation may be considered, but our courts do not forgive. Offended parties and their families make headline news as they call for tougher sentences.

It is no wonder then that most commentators talk about christian forgiveness as a one-to-one affair, or within families and clans. This is all very well until something like the 9/11 attack on New York occurs and there is a deep stirring across the world to punish the Moslems – as if “we” had not perpetrated similar horrors many times through the course of history. If Americans still feel offended at the suggestion of Moslems building a mosque close to Ground Zero, it means they have not forgiven, but continue blame the Moslem world for that assault. Many, of course, do forgive, and work for reconciliation. Others are so hurt they cannot forgive, any more than they can forget.

Victims of assault find that their injuries and humiliation have become ingrained deep in their being. Even those who forgive find that they only made some space within for some softer feelings. The harsh reality of an open wound, a ruined life, is not healed. If they forgo the desire to see the perpetrator squirm, to cry for retribution and just punishment, their tortured spirit is relaxed a little, but the hurt, the harm, the injury, the wound may never heal.

Forgiveness in the church is closely associated in our minds with the going to confession – too closely perhaps. The confessional is referred to as a tribunal in which the priest as judge ensures as best he can that the one confessing is sincere in what he says about amending his ways, and then proclaims God's pardon in the formula of absolution which is seen as washing away the sin and the guilt. It is in the end very much a procedure; any chance of a personal encounter is minimised, and the human victim of our harming is never present. If forgiveness is to be healing, it needs to be a personal, face to face affair, where feelings can be expessed and acknowledged, and trust founded anew on tangible sincerity and regret.


This week there is an abundance of material to read on 9/11. These four articles in Eureka Street could be enough for meditation:

What was left behind Catherine Marshall;

To remember is to pray Brian Doyle;

America changed and still the same Jim McDermott ;

Muslims' Ground Zero home Peter Kirkwood

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