Forgiveness from the Heart: Homily for the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We contemplate forgiveness this Sunday. Despite being one of the words most bandied about by Catholics, forgiveness is something that is particularly difficult to understand, because even though we wish to forgive, what do we do with the hurt that we feel when we are wronged, and the anger that boils up in our hearts when we think of that wrong?

To understand forgiveness, it is best to understand the basic formula of Catholicism: place God above all things. We cannot, we simply cannot, understand, and set right, our relationship with our brother, if we do not first understand, and set right things with, with God. Address God, first and all things will then flow aright.

In the case of forgiveness, we need to first understand that God forgave us first and it is this forgiveness that we imitate in our attempts to forgive our brothers. The great St. John Chrysostum teaches us:

He created us from nothing; he made the whole visible world for us, the heaven, the sea, the earth, animals, plants and seeds. I must be brief because of the infinite number of his works. Into us alone of all that are on earth he breathed a living soul. He planted a garden for us. He gave us a helpmate and set us over all the brute species, and he crowned us with glory and honor.

And yet, after all of this, after the Creator of all things allowed us the privilege to walk with him in the garden of paradise, what did man do? He disobeyed God and ruptured the relationship between God and man.

My dear brothers and sisters, from our own lives we all know that when trust is broken, it is very difficult to restore it. Look at those who live unchristian lives, a betrayal is very often the reason for them to swear a lifelong enmity. They look to destroy that person in any, and every, way they can. In such a context, if God had been like us, our punishment ought to have been the punishment intended for the servant in the Gospel:

a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. 
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold,
along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
in payment of the debt.

We are in the debt of anyone who does good to us, and woe to us if we bite the hand that has fed us. And it was the hand of God that our first parents struck in their original sin!

And yet, Chrysostom points out:

when humanity turned out ungrateful toward its benefactor, he thought us worthy of an even greater gift—forgiveness.

Commenting on the Gospel today, St. Augustine points out that Our Lord’s reference to seventy times is not without significance, for in his gospel St. Luke enumerates seventy-seven generations between Our Lord, and Adam, our first father and the originator of sin. It was this original sin that Our Lord came to redeem us from, and thus, when He redeemed this sin, he redeemed seventy-seven generations!

It is to this perfection, then, that Our Lord Our Lord exhorts us:

Be perfect, … as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt. 5: 48)

He is asking us to be like Him, imitate Him. And this is precisely the point of the parable we read about in the Gospel today. The king who forgives the debt is a reference to God who forgives us our sins. Chrysostom once again points out that we should observe how generous God is; the servant asked only for an extension of time, but the king gave him more than he asked for, remission and forgiveness of the entire debt.

But none of this helps us to understand how we should forgive. Perhaps I can offer an example from my own life. I have been grievously wounded by a couple of people. When I think about it, my heart boils over with anger. I contemplate words I will say, to cut them down, or simply to defend, or protect, myself. Forgive them I want to, but my heart cannot fathom how to do so!

And then, the other day, at confession, the words of the confessor, “pray for them” trickled into my heart. While kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament I realized that whenever the angry thoughts related to these men come into my heart, I must stop immediately and pray, both for them, and myself. The words I use, and often recommend to penitents who come to me, are the second half of the Hail Mary:

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners,

Now, and at the hour of our death,

Amen. 

And it does not have to be this prayer. Think of the words of Our Lord, when He was pinned in agony to the Cross:

      “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Lk 23:24)

For in truth, we do not know what we are doing when we hurt and wound someone through sin. We are casting our own mortal soul in danger of eternal fire if we do not repent.

The point of these prayers, is to plough our heart, repeating them over and over, so that eventually, whenever the anger bubbles up, it will automatically become a prompt to pray for that person, and ourselves. At that time, we will be able to say, I have forgiven him from my heart. 

May Our Lord grant us the grace to forgive our brother from our heart.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners,

Now, and at the hour of our death,

Amen.  

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish church of Our Lady of the Rosary, Caranzalem.)

(Image reference: Our Lady of Sorrows, A. Lusson & L. Lefèvre, 1874 (?), Church of St. Laurent, Parish.)

Reconcile the World! Twenty third Sunday in Ordinary Time

This Sunday the lectionary turns our eyes towards two of the seven spiritual works of mercy; third of which is: admonish the sinner.

In the first reading, from the Prophet Ezekiel we hear clearly:

[if] you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way,
the wicked shall die for his guilt,
but I will hold you responsible for his death.

In other words, we are bound to the sin of our neighbour, especially if we can see that they are committing sin and have stood by doing nothing – as is, all too often, the case.

In the second reading St. Paul underlines that to counsel a friend, or a neighbour, that they are doing wrong is, in fact, an act of love.

Love does no evil to the neighbor;
hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.

To permit someone to remain in error, to continue in sin, is to do evil to this brother of ours. Listen to the words of St. Augustine who echoes St. Paul on this matter:

If you fail to do so, you are worse than he is. He has done someone harm, and by doing harm he has stricken himself with a grievous wound. Will you then completely disregard your brother‘s wound? Will you simply watch him stumble and fall down? Will you disregard his predicament? If so, you are worse in your silence than he in his abuse.

The scriptures and the teaching of the Church are quite clear; we may not stay silent in the face of a sin.

This formulation of love should give us pause to think. Too often today, love is understood as an absolute commitment to support those we purportedly love in their ways, even if their actions lead to evil. If a man leaves his wife, we feel obliged by friendship to support him. If a spouse is adulterous, we excuse it on the grounds that they needed the affirmation. If a person adopts a disordered identity, and there are so many of them available today, we are told that we must support them in this choice.

But none of this is love. This is merely the toleration of evil in the contemporary culture which promotes the idolatry of the self. Love is not love if it does not force our beloved to confront the truth.

And so, how do we take on this task? Our Lord offers us a series of steps in which the sinner may be admonished.

In the first place:

If your brother sins against you,
go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. 

Alone! In other words, we are not to humiliate our brother in public, or in private for that matter. We are to go and tell him about the fault, and get him to recognize his fault. And to enable us to not shame or be superior when we do this, Our Lord asks us to remember that we are sinners too! This is what He means when He says:

First remove the plank from your eye. (Mt 7:5)

It does not mean that we are to not care what people do and simply mind our own business.

To admonish our brother about his sin is to educate him about the nuances of the act. Perhaps he does not realise that it is a sin. For example, how many of us here recognize the fact that when we break the laws of the state – even the traffic regulations so casually broken by all of us – we are sinning grievously?

The calling of others that Our Lord subsequently recommends, is once again, not an attempt to shame the sinner, but to persuade him through numbers. Perhaps where one can be dismissed as too scrupulous, or crazy, the presence of two others will help the sinner recognize that the correction is not born from a personal opinion alone?

If the sinner still refuses to repent, Our Lord advises us to tell the Church. in other words, ask for a priest to counsel the sinner. If even this fails, then it becomes obvious that this person is no longer in communion with the Church. And this is a serious matter for the sinner risks losing his soul.

But Our Lord does not end there. He recommends:

Again, amen, I say to you,
if two of you agree on earth
about anything for which they are to pray,
it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. 

What do we pray about in circumstances where our brother refuses pious counsel? That our errant brother be consigned to the flames of hell? No! We pray that they be saved, that Divine Providence step in to counsel them and bring them back to communion and salvation.

My dear brothers and sisters, I was recently present at the funeral of a person who battled Holy Mother Church all his life and absolutely refused to accept the final sacraments. The sacraments were finally administered, through the intervention of his brother, when he was unconscious and drifting into death. I was moved by the faith of this man’s brother who after the sacraments were administered, realized that his dying brother did not have a scapular. So, he returned home, brought a scapular, and tied it around his brother’s wrist. In so doing, he was binding Our Lady to Her promise to St. Simon Stock: “Whosoever dies clothed with this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.”

My dear brothers and sisters, I have no doubt that despite the stubbornness of this man, the faith and fervent prayers of his brother and all his family will ensure that this man’s final destiny is not hell!

The final spiritual act of mercy is to pray for the living and the dead, and this is precisely what the Gospel acclamation teaches us today:

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Go therefore, dearly beloved in Christ, and pray, so that you may reconcile sinners with God, both those in the flesh, and those who languish in the fires of purgatory.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Pangim on 6 September 2026.)

(Image reference: Angel with lily and a putto handing the scapular, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1744, Scuola Grande dei Carmini, Venice.)