Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sin overwhelms. As a torrent, swirling sucking us into its current, sin seduces us. Addicted by sin’s tentacles, sin strangles and then abuses our very selves. Yet, despite the dysfunction caused by our addictive desires, we love our sin. It’s our addiction, a disordered desire to pacify our neediness. Addictions cause dysfunctions. Dysfunction understood properly means that the very actions taken to solve the problem make the problem worse. Dysfunctional, we defend, develop, and display our sin, believing sin improves and empowers me, making me stronger and better. Sadly, the dysfunction of sin strengthens me to dig deeper into addiction.
Any addict reveals the power of their addiction. When they need a fix, they go to any length to satisfy their craving. Nothing stops them, not even the destruction of their lives nor the lives of their loved ones. Inflated with infatuation, addicts become blind to the consequences of their sins. But when the consequences come crashing down, making the addict examine the wake of tragedies left behind, the sin capsizes. What once enslaved the addict in a snare of physical, emotional, psychological, relational, or spiritual dysfunction, now becomes the force to freedom. The battles fought defending the addiction, now become the strength to defeat the sin.
Sin’s defeat comes when we acknowledge defeat. Beaten down, we no longer rely on personal strength to conquer our sin, but turn to divine intervention. Drained, frustrated, even exhausted, we cry out. Shattered, we with the Psalmist pray: “In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help” (Ps 18:6). Overwhelmed and overpowered, sinking into the depths, we cry out, reaching up pleading for healing. At the point of despair, when all feels lost, Christ comes. He reaches down into the depths of our misery. His touch transforms our lives. No longer in love with our sin, we love the one who saved us from our sins. This is grace. No other force or power frees us from sin. Only Christ saves us. He intervenes, changing our addiction into a witness. Once we acknowledge Jesus as the One Who saves, our lives change. We no longer trust in self, but only in Him.
Knowing freedom after feeling despair, our understanding of forgiveness intensifies. As John Newton wrote so long ago, Amazing Grace, he endured the storms of his sins tossing him about. Newton endured such a violent storm that in the midst of the terror, which threatened to wash him into the raging sea, he converted. From trading slaves, he traded his sins for life in Christ. Finding God amidst the storms in his life, eventually he wrote,
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.
Anyone who endures the terrors of the night, who lives in the cobra’s den, and is suddenly saved cannot help but have a change of heart. To be enmeshed in dangerous lusts, to be strangled by the terrors of the night, then suddenly see the light and be cut free, we convert.
Conversion strikes. As lightning illumines the sky, so the grace of God illumines our minds, cutting us free from the tentacles that strangled our hearts. We, who are caught up in a lost battle against violent passions tossing us about as toys, enslaving us in a life of debauchery and dissipation, suddenly set free, reveal the power of Christ Who reaches down to save a wretch like me.
As the blind man in Jericho, crying out, “Son of David have pity”, so too we who are blinded by our sins, addicted to self-slavery, despairing at our future, suddenly see because the God-man merely whispered, “Receive your sight” (Luke 18:42). Peter sinking into the sea, cries out, “Lord, Save me” (Matt 14:30), and Jesus pulls him up from the raging waters. To the paralytic, a man bound by his sins, Jesus says “Your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:9). Take up your mat. Go home! How desperate the man must have been, but with a simple gesture Jesus unbinds him, sets him free, restoring his life, freeing him from his sins.
Throughout the Gospels, sinners come to Jesus empty, exhausted, exiled. They are lost, but Jesus is their hope. With a word, with a touch, with a look, what ensnared them into the depths of hell, they are suddenly set free. What seems impossible is possible for Jesus.
It is not just others who are sinners, but we ourselves are sinners. We too are trapped in the tentacles of our addictions. Facing demonic fears, forced into slavery because of abuse, addictions, angers, and affairs, desolate and desperate, Jesus simply saves us if we acknowledge our defeat. If we admit our need for help, confess our sins, and repent, Jesus saves.
Lost in hell, we convert and are taken up to heaven. Yet, lifted up, saved by grace, another battle arises. We now battle for others. Addicted to their sins, we see—experience—their sufferings. We, moved by grace, reach out to help and to heal.
Sinners fall into the abyss. Instead of watching them fall, Jesus asks us to reach down and lift them up. We who have been saved by grace are now asked to save others in Christ’s name. We who went through hell and overcame the despair of sin, now become channels of grace for those still in hell. We understand the struggle, the intensity to be free. Christ uses us because we know the way that leads to grace. Empowered by the grace of Christ, we become a christ to others, caught up in their sins.
Peter understands the gift he received. He who declared himself a sinful man, now asks the Lord how many times do I need to forgive? In contrast to the seven-fold curse of Cain, Peter offers forgiveness seven times (Gen 4:15). Jesus chides Peter’s generosity. Not seven times, but seventy times seven. A merciful heart does not count his mercies, but lives and abides in mercy. Living in divine mercy, we become merciful. It not something we do, it is something we are.
Mercy cannot penetrate our heart, that is take away the bitterness and anger we feel on account of our own sinfulness, unless we become merciful. As the Catechism comments on the Merciless Servant, he was a heartless man. It is in the heart, where a “Person decides for or against God” (CCC, # 368). This wicked servant could not convert. He decided against God even though God forgave him.
The heart is the center in which we have a radical re-orientation in our lives. Through forgiveness, we have a change of heart, “a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward evil actions we have committed” (CCC. # 1431). Our hearts experience a crucifixion. We die to our sins and become alive in Christ. Dead to sin, we understand the horrors of sins. We have compunction, a dread of our own sins and the sins of others.
Sadly, the Merciless Servant rejected mercy. He refused to be transformed. He resented his freedom. He received mercy but did not have a change of heart. He could not do to others what God did for him. Mercy did not penetrate the hardness of his heart. He stayed locked in his sins and became worse than he was, bitter and vengeful.
How true is this for us who receive the inestimable gift of God’s grace. If we receive forgiveness freely then we ought to give forgiveness freely. This is the heart of Christianity. Christ gave us his amazing grace freely; should not we then give freely what we received? Freed from our incalculable debt of our own sins, we are to become channels of mercy for those still living in sin.
Experiencing the sins of others, watching others destroy their lives, living dysfunctional, we offer correction, even at the price of rebuke. We offer forgiveness, even at the cost of being sinned against. We offer salvation even at the price of being condemned. We offer mercy even if we are crucified because we imitate Christ. Upon the cross, He forgave us of our sin. Upon the cross, He invites us to forgive those who sin against us. Upon the cross, he exemplifies, “Forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Only in forgiving do we understand the forgiveness we received.
Forgiveness, even forgiving the ones who hate and revile us, tests our hearts. Forgiveness is humanly impossible. Yet with God, all things are possible. Our hearts feeble cannot forget, cannot not feel. We, with Christ, feel the pains of hell in our heart. We never forget the wounds scared for life by the sins of others. Yet, as the Catechism teaches,
It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession (CCC, # 2483).
This is the amazing grace we receive. We accomplish what we cannot do on our own. We forgive because by grace, our hearts are transformed. Our wretchedness is beatified. We become amazing souls.