Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

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).

The Source of Our Joy

How can a man like Amer, age 54 years old, experience and feel joy when he is dispossessed of all that he has and driven from his hometown Mosul, Iraq, where his family lived for many generations, by the militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS and forced to live in a cold, drafty United Nations camp for internally displaced peoples in Northern Iraq? And there are hundreds like him, Christians who suffer terrible pain and deprivations because of religious persecution, but are joyful and happy despite the sufferings they are going through. How can these people suffer and still be joyful?

They follow the advice of James who wrote, "My brothers, count it pure joy when you are involved in every sort of trial" (1:2). They are our brothers and sisters in Christ suffering for their faith. Of course they do not enjoy these sufferings. Certainly it is very painful for them. But in the midst of these sufferings they find joy deep in their hearts.

They experience joy in their hearts because they are most acutely aware of the presence of Jesus in their midst. As the French novelist Leon Bloy once wrote to a friend, "Joy is the infallible sign of God's presence". They sense that despite their sufferings or on account of these sufferings God is most present to them.

Where God is present and where we are aware of this presence we experience joy no matter what is happening around us. This is what happened to Zaccheus in our Gospel reading today. We heard the words of Luke "And he came down quickly and received him with joy", that is, He (Zaccheus) came down quickly (from the tree he had climbed) and received him (Jesus) with joy." Zaccheus experienced joy in his heart in the awareness of Jesus' presence before him.

How does Jesus do this, injecting joy into the heart of Zaccheus?  He does this through his Spirit. The Spirit of Jesus awakens the spirit in the heart of Zaccheus. When the spirit of Zaccheus is wakened by Jesus' Spirit joy burst forth from his heart. For as the Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians joy is a fruit of the Spirit along with love, peace, patient endurance, kindness, generosity, faith, mildness and chastity (5:22).

This is the reason why our Lady and Mother Mary exulted, "my spirit finds joy in God my savior" (Luke 1:47). It is our spirit that experiences joy when he comes into contact with the Spirit of Jesus.

Our first reading tells us that the Lord is the lover of souls, and his imperishable spirit is in all things. This spirit was in Zaccheus as he is also in us. This spirit of Zaccheus was touched by the Spirit of Jesus and he rejoiced like the Virigin Mary. When our spirit is touched by the Spirit of Jesus we also rejoice.

Our second reading tells us not to be alarmed by any spirit or by an oral statement. It is only the Spirit of Jesus who can truly guide us and we are sure that we are guided by this Spirit of Jesus when we experience this joy deep in our hearts.

Contact, real, experiential contact with Jesus produces joy. Some of you still remember the moment when you personally met Jesus in the sacrament or while reading the Bible, or while listening to a homily or preaching. You remember that joy, inexpressible joy was produced in your heart. This is what happened to Zaccheus when he personally met Jesus who invited himself into his home. His spirit was wakened up by Jesus as our spirit is also wakened up by the Word of God. Then we feel joy.

Jesus said that the Spirit gives life (John 6:63). We rejoice over the birth of a child because we know that new life is before us. That is why during Christmas time we sing, Joy to the world the Lord is come. It is only Jesus' coming into our hearts that produces this joy in us. This joy cannot be brought to reality by singing, acting or by any other trick. It is the result of the action of Jesus' Spirit in us.

At this very hour as our Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East and elsewhere and even in our midst suffer a new humanity is being born. As Jesus said, humanity is undergoing the pangs of a new birth (Matthew 24:8). This new humanity is the mystical body of Jesus.

Fr. Vincent Rochford expresses this truth very beautifully and most appropriately. He wrote, ". . . God the Son is still present and active in the world of men in a body; now, in a body taken from the womb of all humanity, a body composed of human beings united with him by sharing his life. That body is the means by which Christ is inserted into a world to be saved. Through it he continues to teach, to bless, to heal, to feed, and to suffer." (Pattern of Scripture, 1958, pp. 55-56). This is the mystical body of Jesus.

Jesus is present among us through his mystical body. When we are aware of this presence we are filled with joy, as happened with Zaccheus.

Join me now as I prayerfully recite a stanza from the poem by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. This poem in Latin was entitled JESU, DULCIS MEMORIA. In English the title is JESUS THE VERY THOUGHT OF THEE. Incidentally the translator of this poem from Latin to English was the Anglican priest Edward Caswall who not only returned to the Catholic faith but also joined the group of the priests of St. Philip Neri, the Oratorians.

Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Jesus, our only joy be thou,

as thou our prize wilt be;

Jesus, be thou our glory now.

and through eternity. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

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).

The Sinner Who Did Not Commit Any Sin

When I read in the lives of the saints the statement that they claimed they were the greatest sinner, I thought that they were just exaggerating. I thought that their statement was only an expression of their feeling with no basis in reality. I thought so because I knew that there were sinners greater than them.

For example, we read this statement by St. Paul in his first letter to Timothy, "You can depend on this as worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I myself am the worst" (1:15), We ask ourselves, How could St. Paul be the worst sinner when there were sinners greater than him during his time? It is true that he once persecuted the church of Jesus but during his lifetime the ones who put Jesus to death were still alive, the chief priests, Pilate the governor who condemned Jesus to death, the soldiers who nailed him to the cross. Certainly these latter were worse than Paul as sinners. Paul persecuted the church, but these killed the head of this church, Jesus. But Paul said that he was the worst of sinners. Was he telling the truth or was he just exaggerating?

Another example. How could St. Teresa of Jesus write that she was a miserable sinner (Life, chapter 21) when while still a child she already desired martyrdom for Christ?  

Closer to our time we have this statement by our present Pope, Francis. He said, "I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner." How can Pope Francis say that he is a sinner when we address him as "Your Holiness". How can a holy person claim that he is a sinner?

The reason why it is difficult for us to think of these persons as sinners, Paul the Apostle, Teresa of Jesus, Pope Francis, is because we measure sinfulness by the sins a person has committed. Using this measure we know that other persons did worse than Paul, Teresa and Pope Francis. Using this measure these three were far more saintly than the rest of mankind.

But they spoke the truth when they said or wrote that they were sinners. This is because they did not compare themselves with other human beings but with God. Compared with the all holy God all of us are sinners and worst sinners by our own right. This is what Jesus wants us to learn from our Gospel reading today.

First, Jesus does not want us to think and behave like the Pharisee who only saw goodness in himself and despised others, even when he ascribed this goodness to God, for he thanked God that he was good in his own eyes. Jesus does not want us to do that.

Second, Jesus wants us to identify ourselves with the tax collector who said, "‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’

We are all sinners and the worst of sinners. This is not because we have done great crimes in our life, but because we are organically joined to a humanity which rebelled against God. Deep in our hearts we are rebels.

After creating us human beings God did not just say that he found us good as he did with the creatures before us. He declared that he found us very good. We were superlatively good. No one other than God could be better than us. But what did we do? In the person of our first parents and through them we rebelled against God. We followed Satan by disobeying God's command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when we followed Satan, we destroyed the whole of creation. All the crimes, violence, sufferings, tortures we see around us and throughout history have their root in this rebellion of our first parents. And because we were in our first parents we too were part of this rebellion.

But God did not give up. We destroyed his creation up to the farthest star. But God determined to renew his creation. And for this he sent his Son to pay for our sinfulness. And this Son in the man Jesus suffered all kinds of deprivations and died a most painful death to redeem us. God himself in his second person had to undergo such excruciating suffering and death for us. So, indeed we are worst sinners because we made God to suffer and die for us in his second person.

In paying for our sinfulness Jesus became sin for us. This is what Paul affirms. "For our sakes God made him (Jesus) who did not know sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21). That is how terrible our sin or sinfulness is. It made him who was completely sinless to be sin, to be full of our sins, of our sinfulness so that we can have the holiness of God. For our sake he became a sinner without committing a single sin.

That is how God loved us. And we are not aware of the sufferings that God went through to deliver us from our sins. This is because deep in our hearts we are sinners. And in our Gospel reading Jesus wants us to acknowledge this fact together with the tax collector, a person despised during his time as openly a sinful man.

Let us pray as we bow our heads. Lord Jesus, thank you for this story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Thank you for making us realize that we are indeed sinners, we have participated in inflicting upon you terrible pains and nailing you to the cross. Be merciful unto us, sinners. Amen.
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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

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).

The Final Step

The readings today focus on a trait that Jesus wants us to have when we are praying for something. This trait is persistence or perseverance. He wants us to continue praying until we get what we are asking for.

In the first reading we have the case of Moses who persisted in having his hands outstretched in prayer to God while Joshua fought against the descendants of Amalek, the grandson of Esau who was the twin brother of Jacob or Israel. When Moses got tired and lowered his hands the Amalekites won the battle, but when Moses persisted in raising his hands with the help of Aaron and his sons, Joshua won the battle.

In the second reading we heard St. Paul telling Timothy and us to "proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching."

And in the Gospel we have St. Luke telling us that Jesus told a parable to his listeners "about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary".

Three readings about the value of persistence or perseverance. Jesus said elsewhere, "The man who holds out to the end, however, is the one who will see salvation" (Matthew 24:13). Holding out to the end is essential in our Christian life.

Some of you have heard about the persistence of the inventor Thomas Alva Edison in trying to produce the incandescent lamp. He tried more than a thousand ways to produce this electric lamp. Some have estimated between 5 thousand and 10 thousand attempts. There is a record that Edison's lamp factory conducted 2,774 experiments to produce this light bulb.

What almost all of us have not heard is about the number of times Edison experimented to produce the alkaline battery, the battery we use in our flashlights and watches and computers and cell phones. This involved more than 10,000 experiments. There is a story that a fellow sympathized with him for not being able to produce the battery that he desired and said something like, 'Isn't it a waste of time doing all those experiments without producing any result?' Edison is said to have immediately answered with a smile, 'Results! Why man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won't work!'

Such was the persistence of this famous inventor who openly acknowledged that he did not believe in the God of the theologians. If such a person who was considered by many as not Christian could be so persistent, how much more we who claim and profess that we are God's children and brother of Jesus the Son of God?

If there is one person who is perfectly persistent in his prayers for us, it is Jesus. Scriptures say that day and night he offered prayers to God for us. The writer to the Hebrews says, "In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God, who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence (5:7). And now he intercedes for us day and night before his Father God. In the Christian Prayer which some of us use we join Jesus in his interceding for the whole of humanity and creation.

We know from the Gospels that Jesus spent whole nights in prayer. That is how persistent he was in prayer. We read in St. Luke's Gospel, "Then he (Jesus) went out to the mountain to pray spending the night in communion with God." (6:12).

And if there is a person who desires most to end the poverty, violence, corruption, dehumanization around us, it is Jesus. His main method of implementing this desire that he has is prayer, persistent prayer to his heavenly Father. This is what he tells us in the parable we heard from the Gospel today. The persistent prayer of the widow changed the mind of the corrupt judge. Our persistent prayer will hasten our integral liberation, not only liberation from sin and its root, but also from its fruits, the poverty and violence we see around us today. That is why Jesus caused the Book of Revelation to be written by his Spirit through John so that he and his whole church prepare for and hasten this day when "He (God) shall wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the former world has passed away" (21:4).

In the end the final step of God is to vindicate us his saints, just like the unjust judge who vindicated the widow in the Gospel we heard today. And our final step is to persist, persevere in prayer. As the bookmark of St. Teresa of Jesus reads, "Patience wins all things."

Let us pray bowing our heads. Lord Jesus, you and your Church today remind us to persist in prayer. Give us the grace of persevering in prayer so that we hasten the day when poverty and violence will be completely banished from our minds and from our midst. In your gracious name we pray. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

 

Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

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).

Second Necessary Step to Eradicate Poverty

In the Washington headquarters of the World Bank is carved in stone this statement of its mission "Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty". Its goal is the ending of extreme poverty within a generation, that is, by 2030 among the more than 145 client countries. The World Bank admits that despite some progress in fulfilling this mission the number of people globally living in extreme poverty remains unacceptably high. 

The same World Bank estimates that in the present year 2016 there are 896 million people living in extreme poverty, that is, people who live on 1 and 90 cents or 90 Philippine pesos a day or less. The DoSomething.org estimates that nearly one half of the world's population, more than 3 billion people, live on less than 2 dollars and 50 cents or 118 Philippine pesos a day. These are the relatively poor. Its estimate of the extremely poor is higher than that of the World Bank, 1.3 billion, not 896 million. We can safely estimate that more or less 1 billion people live in extreme poverty. These people are always hungry, are without adequate clothing and shelter and are deprived of basic services like clean drinking water and basic education. They suffer daily and die in pain.

The World Bank has a three part strategy to end extreme poverty; 1) by the countries growing in an inclusive, labor-intensive way; 2) by their investing in human capital of people, teaching them basic skills for living; and 3) by their insuring poor and vulnerable people against the shocks that can push them deeper into poverty like natural calamities. This strategy does not incorporate the second step necessary to eradicate poverty which we heard from the Gospel reading today.

The DoSomething.org has also a strategy to end poverty. It has 46 simple ways that anyone can do to help eliminate poverty but this does not include the second step necessary to eradicate poverty which we heard from the Gospel reading today.

Our Gospel reading does not have the words "the second step necessary to eradicate poverty". But a person by the name of Wallace D. Wattles in the early part of the twentieth century discovered from his studies and experience that the attitude expected by Jesus from the ten lepers in our Gospel reading is the second step necessary to eradicate poverty in one's personal life and in the life of a community or even of a country.

You may wonder and ask me what is the first step necessary to eradicate poverty? It is implied in our Gospel reading, but the second step is given more importance. And it is this second step in which most of us fail. The first step was made explicit by Jesus in Matthew's Gospel. Jesus said, "Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For the one who asks receives. The one who seeks finds. The one who knocks, enters" (Matthew 7:7-8). This first step was implicit in the loud calling of the ten lepers in the Gospel narrative. They shouted, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” They asked Jesus to have pity on them. The first step is to ask God to deliver us out of poverty, personal, communal, national or global.

Wallace Wattles expressed the first step this way. These are his actual words in his book THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH. “. . . the first step toward getting rich is to convey the idea of your wants to the formless substance” (Chapter 7). This formless substance is his way of naming God. It is the equivalent of the Pure Act of our scholastic philosophers and theologians, like St. Thomas Aquinas.

Wattles expressed the second step this way: “. . . you relate yourself to it (the formless substance or Pure Act or God) by a feeling of deep and profound gratitude. Many people who order their lives rightly in all other ways are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude. Having received one gift from God, they cut the wires which connect them with him by failing to make acknowledgment.”

One thing is sure from our reading. Jesus expects those whom he helped to be grateful. He asked for the other 9 who did not return to him to thank him.  He said, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”

We do not have written in our Gospel texts Jesus' command to us to give thanks, but this story in our Gospel reading tells us that Jesus does want us to give thanks to people who help us and to God. And Jesus himself gave thanks many times. And to impress upon our minds that we need to give thanks he has through his Holy Spirit and his Church arranged that the Mass be called Eucharist, the Greek word for "thanks" because when he instituted the Mass he gave thanks. Everyday the Eucharist is celebrated. Everyday thanksgiving is celebrated. And St. Paul the Apostle is explicit in his first letter to the Thessalonians. He wrote, "In every thing give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you" (5:18 AV).

We know from the letter to the Hebrews that Jesus does pray always before God his Father interceding for us (7:25). And like when he was physically on earth he gave thanks to God, he still gives thanks to God for us. We unite our voices with his especially in the Christian Prayer which some of us use.

Jesus does not want these 1 billion people to continue living in extreme poverty. He created each one of them with care and precision. He wants to give them the abundant life. But he has given us the task of enabling them to get out of their poverty by first teaching them to pray for their needs and secondly to infect them with the habit of always being grateful for everything in their lives. For his words are still true, if we seek first his kingship over us, his way of holiness, all these things that we need to get out of poverty will be given to us besides (Matthew 6:33-34). In another work JESUS: THE MAN AND HIS WORK Wattles echoes this statement of Jesus, “Seek the Father’s kingdom, says Jesus, and you solve the bread and butter problem.”

Our Gospel reading would like to add, And be grateful, as Jesus would have us be grateful.

We pray as we bow our heads. Lord Jesus, it is your will that we always give thanks to you. For all that we are and have you have given to us. Teach us and enable us to be always grateful, imitating the foreigner in our Gospel story who came back to you to give thanks. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

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).

Faith That Uproots a Tree

We have heard about a faith that moves mountains. We have not so much as heard about a faith that uproots a tree. But our Gospel reading today talks about a faith which uproots a tree. We heard Jesus say in our Gospel, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you."

The faith that moves mountains is from Matthew's Gospel where Jesus says, "I assure you, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would be able to say to this mountain 'Move from here to there'' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible for you." (17:20). This was echoed by Paul in his chapter on love. He wrote "if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2). This faith has been understood by many as moving or getting rid of huge obstacles or great difficulties in life, the mountain representing these obstacles or difficulties. There have been reports of literal, physical mountains moved by men who exercised great faith, following Jesus' statement. The most famous of these is about the Mokattam mountain moved by a certain St. Simon the Tanner to prove before a caliph or Muslim leader that Christianity was the true religion founded by Jesus. There is also a story about St. Gregory the Wonder Worker who moved a mountain to give place for a church building.

But we have no story of a tree being uprooted and planted in a sea by the faith of a person. Some scholars think that Luke here uses a story by Jesus about the mustard seed which represents faith in the Gospel of Mark which also talks about moving a mountain (11:22-23). Instead of choosing the mountain his version is about a tree, the sycamine tree which is a wild fig or mulberry in our lectionary.

But I think the Church wants us to learn about faith in this Gospel reading because this is also the topic in the first and second readings. Primarily this is the faith of Jesus. Only secondarily is it the faith of the apostles and our faith.

In the second reading we heard Paul's words to Timothy: "Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." We see here that faith and love are in Christ Jesus.

In the first reading we heard the prophet Habakkuk say "the just one, because of his faith, shall live." In the Acts of the Apostles Jesus is given the title "the Just One". As the just one He lived by faith, like us.

It is a little bit difficult for us to think that Jesus lived by faith because we have tended to view only his divinity. He was indeed a divine person but when he was on earth he was fully a man, completely like us but without sin, as the Letter to the Hebrews says (4:15).

In the third reading or the Gospel we heard the apostles asking Jesus, “Increase our faith.” The sense in the original words used "prosthes heymin" is "Give more to us" faith. It is as if the apostles said to Jesus, "We know you have plenty of faith, Jesus. Give us more of your faith".

Jesus did not reply, "Here, take more of my faith." But he said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you."

In effect Jesus told the apostles, ‘There is no need for me to give you more of my faith. What is important is that you have real faith, even if it is as small as the seed of a mustard. If you have this living faith you can uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea by just your word.'

Then Jesus proved to the apostles that they had this faith already. The succeeding parable shows this. If they had a servant, Jesus said, coming from work in the field, they would not say to this servant, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’. Rather they would say, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’. If you can say this to your servant with full expectancy that your servant will follow your instruction you have this faith you need to uproot a tree. But having done so, say ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done only what we were obliged to do.’

Jesus is telling us that faith is simply obedience to the word of God.

Now our question is, Why did the apostles request Jesus to increase their faith? This was because they found it impossible to do what Jesus required of them without great faith. In the preceding verse but which is not in our Gospel reading Jesus told them to forgive even seven times an offender who says to them "Sorry". The word seven here signifies many or all the time. The apostles, like most of us, found this repugnant to do, to forgive an offender who has sinned against us many times or all the time. So they asked for Jesus to give them more of his faith to forgive such an offender.

In plain language we would now say, ‘You find this repugnant and difficult to do, to forgive your enemy who sins against you all the time? Just tell them that they are forgiven and they are forgiven. It will not be impossible for you. You have this faith to forgive if you obey Jesus' words. It is as simple as that.’

There is a curious detail about this mulberry tree that Jesus said we can uproot and plant in the sea if we have faith. I got this curious detail not from a professional commentator of the Bible but from John Quintanilla, a kind of Christian business man in Texas, USA. This John said that the reason why Jesus chose this mulberry tree in his parable is because it illustrates the harm done by unforgiveness. First, this tree has deep roots which are hard to kill. Unforgiveness is like that, it bores deep into our souls, difficult to take out. Secondly, this tree was so common around the land of Jesus that people used it for coffin. This signifies that unforgiveness leads to spiritual death. Thirdly, according to Quintanilla the fruit of this tree is bitter. It can only be eaten bit by bit because of its bitterness. Unforgiveness eats away our souls bit by bit almost unnoticed by us. And fourthly, the fruit of this tree is pollinated only by being stung by a wasp. Unforgiveness stings our hearts and spreads the fruit of unforgiveness around us. More and more people become unforgiving.

Interesting detail, thanks to John Quintanilla of Texas. Back to our readings.

Our readings tell us that Jesus has faith. Jesus tells us that we have faith already if we can command and obey a command. Faith is simply obeying God's word. The famous Ralph Waldo Emerson has this very relevant statement from his essay on the spiritual laws. He wrote, "The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word."

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, you tell us we have already the faith necessary to uproot unforgiveness in our life. Lead us to use this faith by the guidance of your Spirit. Right now we forgive all those who have hurt us. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.