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24 OT - September 16, 2020

On the calendar today it says it is Grandparents’ Day.  There’s an old saying, “Parents can not be everywhere, so God created grandparents.”  May God bless our grandmothers and grandfathers and godparents for the great gift that they are.

In today’s Gospel, Peter asks our Lord, “If my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  In ancient times, seven was seen as the perfect number, so it was used to symbolize perfection or completeness.  Peter’s suggestion of seven times would amount to total forgiveness.  But Jesus responds that “not seven times, but seventy-seven times” is the answer, implying that there is no completion to forgiveness.  Seventy-seven implies a sense that forgiveness is not a task to be completed, but an attitude to be integrated into our way of living.  We are called to be forgiving.

However, anger is a basic human emotion that wells up within us naturally in many situations.  If left alone to fester, or express our wrath or vengeance, it can become very poisonous.  Instead, we must embrace the golden rule, forgiving our neighbor, so that we may be forgiven ourselves.  Forgiveness leads to reconciliation.

In Jesus’ parable the king forgave the loan, wiping away the servant’s debt.  This restored him and his family to life.  Had he not done so the servant, wife, and children would have been sold to pay the debt.  How tragic to see him go out and punish the fellow servant who had a much smaller debt.

The first debtor owed a huge amount.  In today’s currency, billions of dollars.  This, of course, is the debt Christ paid on our behalf by dying for each of us on the cross.  We worship a God of mercy, a God of compassion, a God of forgiveness, and a God of healing.  We are called to do the same.  In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  If we expect forgiveness, then we have to forgive one another.  We must have that same love for one another as our God has for us.

Love, Peace, Joy

Fr. Bob

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