24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (2023)

“Three strikes and your out” was a common slogan among politicians proposing new anti-crime legislation in the 1990s. They enacted draconian punishments on offenders convicted of more than three crimes. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Today, our country has the largest prison population in the world. Criminal recidivism has not declined, and there is a disproportionate number of poor and minorities held in jails.

An attitude that limits forgiveness is causing great stress and anger in our society today. Sadly, it is dividing our culture and even straining relationships in our Church. We seem to have become outraged people who are unwilling to try to understand each other and work together for compromise. These tensions are challenging our good character and causing us to be less than the people we would like to be.

Last week, I told you of an article I recently read by David Brooks, the well-known political and social commentator. He blamed our current lack of civil discussion on the decline of emphasis on teaching good moral behavior. Brooks claimed that for the first hundred and fifty years of our national existence, teaching good ethical behavior was the focus of so much of education. The last seventy-five years have seen that decline, he claims. Teaching good behavior needs constant reinforcement and can't be left to schools and other institutions but must be stressed at home and in the family.

I am sure every one of us here wants to be a good person. We want to be as good, kind, and loving as possible. To be candid, we also recognize we have room for improvement. We realize we fall short of our expectations. How do we become more faithful to our ambitions for goodness? How do we build better character and purer hearts? How do we resist the impulse to get caught up in the bitterness, fault finding, and recriminations that have become so common in our culture? What must we do to work to help prevent the gaps in our society from becoming an unbreachable chasm? We need to realign our values more from the hateful discourse we hear today and towards God's forgiveness modeled by Jesus Christ.

Last week, I told you that the gospel passages for the next several weeks come from the part of Matthew's gospel known as the Community Discourse. They feature instructions and parables Jesus used to teach His disciples how they should live as a harmonious community. Last weekend, Jesus told His followers how to offer correction to someone who offended them. First, they should have a face-to-face talk. If that didn't work, they should enlist the help of two or three others. The community should finally be asked for support if they don't resolve the problem. If the offender resisted the community's input, they would be treated as a Gentile or tax collector. They should be isolated but not abandoned. Jesus reached out and invited back to God so many of those He found on the peripheries of His culture, and we must, too.

Today, Jesus continues by offering a parable about forgiveness. “Three strikes and you're out” was also the order of the day in Jesus' time. The rabbis taught God would forgive four times. Humans needed to forgive three times since no person could be more forgiving than God. Peter has been listening to Jesus and understands He wants the disciples to forgive generously. Peter proposes forgiving seven times. Seven was a perfect number for the Jews, so Peter suggests that Jesus would require perfect forgiveness. Jesus wants to emphasize His forgiveness requirement, so He exaggerates the obligation by saying seven times seventy-seven times.

We all experience hurts in our lives. People do painful things to us. Things that make us angry, and we can't help but experience wrath and fury because of them. It is tough to forgive. What is forgiveness anyway? Forgiveness doesn't mean we have suddenly changed our minds and believe we are wrong and our offender was correct. Forgiveness doesn't mean we give the offender permission to injure us again. Forgiveness never means we have to allow abuse to continue or repeat itself. Forgiveness is when we decide not to cling to our anger. Forgiveness recognizes we feel injured but have decided to move on from the incident, and it is the end of the story. We have determined that the pain from our lack of forgiveness harms us more than the offender.

Ben Sirach wrote in today's first reading that our need to forgive comes from our realization that God has so generously forgiven us. All of us have sinned. Maybe we have never cheated on a spouse or robbed a bank. Perhaps we are here in church every Sunday and live with great humility. Nonetheless, we have sinned numerous times. All our little sins add up and resemble a putting stone, making a great boulder. God has been generous with forgiveness, and we must generously offer forgiveness ourselves.

St. Paul envisioned a messianic community of love and welcome in his Letter to the Romans. He saw the church as a community that didn't allow divisions to separate them. Our nation and church both need every single one of us to be examples of generous forgiveness. Unless we- as faithful followers of Jesus Christ- can be vessels of forgiveness, our culture will disintegrate, and strife and hatred will consume us. Who will we model our behavior after, Jesus or weak self-consumed demagogues? Forgiveness is our only option. There is no other alternative because forgiveness is easier in the long run than carrying the weight of resentment, vindictiveness, and unresolved frustration.

Forgiveness is one of the most critical challenges in our lives. It never comes easily. It takes strength and courage. We can't hope to forgive as God forgives unless we open ourselves to God's grace. A relationship of fidelity to God must be part of our lives if we desire the power to forgive those who injure us. A faithful relationship with the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit comes through daily prayer. It comes from our faithful reception of Jesus Christ really present in the Eucharist. Today, strengthen your relationship with Jesus by faithfully welcoming him into your heart and soul.