Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of
the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may
use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change
or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies
is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some
aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from
glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).
A Debt-Free Life
Today we heard the
second version of the Our Father, the Lucan version, the version according to
St. Luke. This is not the version we use in our prayers. We use the Matthean
version or the version according to St. Matthew. What's the difference? There
are a few differences but most of the words are the same. For one, the ending
"For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever.
Amen." is not in the version read today. We do not use this ending in our
common prayer because it has been found to be an addition only, not really
written by St. Matthew but it has been incorporated in our Mass, as a fitting
ending to our prayer for peace.
Another difference and
this time it is a significant difference is in the petition where we say
"Forgive us our trespasses". Today we did not hear this petition. We
heard rather another petition: "Forgive us our sins". This is the
petition in the original Greek in the Gospel of Luke, it asks for forgiveness
of our sins. Some people put this as their petition in the Our Father that they
recite. They say, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sinned
against us". The first part follows the Lucan version we heard today. The
second part "as we forgive those who sinned against us" is not in the
Gospel of St. Luke. It has been put there by people who want to make a parallel
phrase after the first part: forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins. So
here there is a balance. God forgives our sins, we also forgive the sins of
people towards us.
The second part of
that petition to forgive us our sins is what we heard today, "for we
ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us." And this second part tells us
the mind of Jesus concerning debts. In both versions of the Our Father, that of
St. Luke and that of St. Matthew, Jesus is concerned with debts. Since the
version of St. Luke was later than that of St. Matthew it is safe to say that
the original words of Jesus were really about debts, but the Church in the time
of Luke edited this word to become "sins". Under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit this editing was still valid.
It is unfortunate that
the English Our Father as it has come down to us has "Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespassed against us". The original
Greek has "debts" instead of "trespasses". In the website
catholic.com Jan Wakelin says that it is only English Catholics who use the
word "trespasses" instead of "debts". Then he rationalizes
why "trespasses" is a better word than "debts".
But as we will soon
show, Jesus meant "debts", not trespasses. Simply stated, Jesus
wanted us his followers to be free from debts. This is also what St. Paul the
Apostle told us through the Romans, "Owe no debt to anyone except the debt
that binds us to love one another" (13:8 NAB).
In the Our Father
Jesus is teaching us to ask God, his Father and our Father, to take away our
debts. This is the intent of that petition in the Our Father. Jesus knew the
burden of debts. And he used stories to show how people can be enslaved by
debts, both by borrowing from someone and by holding on to what we have lent to
someone.
In Luke's version of
the Our Father Jesus takes for granted already that his followers have obeyed
his command to give and not to expect something in return. This is because the
second part of the petition says, "for we ourselves forgive everyone in
debt to us." This is already a statement of fact. We ourselves already
forgive those indebted to us.
To prove that this was
the attitude of Jesus toward debts, we read his other statements. He said,
"Give to the man who begs from you. Do not turn your back on the
borrower." (Matthew 5:42). Then in Luke he says, "lend without
expecting repayment. Then will your recompense be great. You will rightly be
called sons of the Most High, since he himself is good to the ungrateful and
the wicked." (6:35).
In short Jesus wants a
debt-free life for his followers. Of course this is difficult to follow during
our time when almost every business is tied to a debt, either to start the
business or keep it operating, or both. What we can say is that in the kingdom
of God, that is, in a life under the lordship of Jesus the ideal is that his
followers do not have personal debts. This is because God delivers them from
debts and sins as they pray the Our Father and also because they give without
expecting anything in return, as Jesus taught us to do.
Let us pray the prayer
Jesus taught us, this time, with full attention on what we are praying. Let us
bow our heads.
Father, hallowed be
your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our
daily bread
and forgive us our
sins
for we ourselves
forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us
to the final test. (NABRE)
Amen.
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