Understanding & Promoting the Catholic Church's Teaching on Marriage

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Forgive us Lord! In the first reading for the twenty-fourth Sunday, we hear this warning from Sirach. “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance.” In the Gospel Jesus tells a parable about a king and two servants. One person forgave another didn’t, so the stingy guy loses in the end. Sirach goes on to remind all of us to remember our last days and set enmity aside. Paul reminds us in our second reading that we are always to live for the Lord. He says this is why Christ came and died for us, That He is the Lord of the living, He is the Lord of us, but also of our brothers and sisters.
One writer suggests that we read this parable of the debtor from the vantage point of being creatures given an undeserved bounty of life and possibility. None of us has done anything to deserve the life we have; it is a pure gift of God—to us and to every other part of creation.
What does this suggest about the relationship we create with the rest of God’s creation? Do we go through life entitled, feeling as if we are always owed something? That we are somehow more deserving than the next person?
Sirach talked about cherishing wrath. That seems to be the route to self-inflicted torment. Instead of cherishing our wrath consider the alternative. Cherishing what we have been given, cherishing God’s great mercy, cherishing the people that are also created in God’s image. When we embrace our world with gratitude, we not only heal our souls, but we heal others as we offer them forgiveness. Before we call in our debts, we might take into account what we have been given from our King, beginning with life itself, and then, all the unmerited advantages of our time and place in History.
God’s creation is lavish, We can be too.

Peace Be with You,
Deacon Steve