Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The Book of Sirach is the source of the first reading for Mass this weekend. Sirach’s author was Joshua, the son of Sirach. (He should not be confused with Joshua, active centuries earlier as a disciple of Moses and leader of the Hebrews as they passed into the Promised Land.)
Some versions of the Bible omit Sirach, since it was not written in Jerusalem or in in Hebrew, considered by some biblical scholars as requirements for authentic Sacred Scripture. However, the Church early in its history declared that Sirach was genuinely inspired by God, setting aside the arguments that site and language are vital in judging the status of a holy writing.
Sirach wished to teach values to his students, drawn from Jewish tradition and belief. The need is easy to imagine. Bright lights and easy living lured the young even then.
Likely composed less than 200 years before Christ, Sirach very much had the bright lights and easy living of his day in mind. The intellectual environment all around him was powerful, affecting even pious Jews. It was filled with elevating human logic, an attitude taken from the Greeks whose military exploits had overwhelmed much of Asia Minor and the Middle East, including the Holy Land.
The reading frankly calls upon its audience to forgive the faults of others and to trust in the merciful God, come what may, a position not exactly consistent with the way many people thought. Wrath and anger are hateful things, the reading insists. No one surrendering to these faults is true to God.
St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans provides the second reading.
The great majority of the Christians in Rome to whom Paul wrote this epistle were probably poor. They were tempted to look longingly at the rich and aristocratic, assuming that because of these advantages the fortunate controlled their own destinies.
Instead, Paul demanded, God controls the lives of all. He protects the just.
In the last reading, from St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus answers the question of how often, and to what extent, must disciples forgive wrongs done to them.
People then hurt each other as much as today. They, as we, owe debts, material or otherwise, to others. They, and we, yearn. They, as we, suffer when injured. They, and we, despair.
How should we react to hurts? The Lord answers that disciples must forgive, not “seven” times, but “seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22). The number meant completely, absolutely and totally.
True Christian forgiveness must in all things resemble God. Anyone insincere or pragmatic, stingy with forgiveness, is not of God.
Christian forgiveness reflects the essence of the redemption. In Christ, we sinners are forgiven. This divine mercy displays the reality revealed by St. John that “God is love,” and that in living by God’s standards, we should live eternally (1 Jn 4:8).
Reflection
The assumption, always present in this country, and alive today, is that the United States was established to be a society founded on the Christian Gospels, with the purpose of promoting these Gospels.
Some of the founders were devout Christians. John Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister. Charles Carroll was a Jesuit-educated Catholic. Others were active believers. Others were not, and for them—and they were more than a few—state support of any religion was an unfair burden upon citizens.
Among the founders professing no organized religion was Benjamin Franklin. He had little regard for institutional religion as he saw it. He once wrote, “Lighthouses are more valuable than churches.”
Churches are supposed to be lighthouses, beacons that guide people across the tossing seas of life to a port of security, righteousness and peace.
People, not buildings, form the Church, although beautiful church buildings can heighten our awareness of the good offered to us by God in the Church.
The Scriptures call people to be lighthouses in their communities and within their families by loving all as disciples with a love that gleams with the divine love and commitment of Christ Jesus. †