Deacon Larry

 

Thursday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

Ezr 13: 1-12; Math 18: 21 – 19:1

Dc. Larry Brockman

Is there some sin that you are guilty of that you fall to over and over again?  Maybe you’re impatient and lose your temper, or take the name of the Lord in vain, or participate in gossip.   And who among us hasn’t had some sin that we truly recognize as a whopper sometime in our lives.  All of course, except me! 

Of course you can always go to confession and confess those sins. even if it is something you do over and over again.  We are confident, because of God’s word to us that we will be forgiven of whatever it is that we have done, as long as we admit our sin and are truly contrite at the time.  And it doesn’t matter how serious the sin is or how often we do it.  What an awesome God we have!   

And yet, when it comes to forgiving others, well, most of us have a problem with that.  But here we have it straight from Jesus.  Seven times seventy times we are to forgive.  Now that doesn’t just mean 490 times and then no forgiveness is needed, because 7 is symbolic of the perfect number.  So, we are to forgive ten times the perfect number squared.  (Sorry, but I’m a retired Engineer and I just couldn’t help that.)  But just think of what that means- ten times perfection times itself.  That’s pretty close to infinite forgiveness.  We expect from God the same kind of infinite forgiveness when you come right down to it.   

This morning, recall some of the people who you have trouble forgiving, and then think of how you would feel if God treated you the way you have treated these people.  I know it’s tough, but we have all got to forgive people who trouble us.  Has one of these folks tried to mend the fence?  That’s their form of being contrite.  And for those who wrong us over and over again, is it something that is symptomatic of human weakness, not really bad intention- maybe teasing or nagging or some habit that bothers you.  Aren’t all of us guilty of the same human frailties, except me, of course? 

We need to forgive our neighbor seven times seventy times, because that is a sign of true humility and a contrite heart.  These are so essential in our appeal for forgiveness to our God, because they show what it means to forgive our brother from our heart. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Holy Family Weekday Homilies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.