Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

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).

Is God a Torturer?

When I read the Gospel passage for today I was a bit shocked when I reached the end of the passage. This was because it was written there that Jesus said that his heavenly Father would also do unto his disciples if they do not forgive every one of their brothers or companions. This means that his heavenly Father would also deliver them to torturers if they do not forgive their brothers and sisters.

Listen to the flow of Jesus' concluding statement to this parable. Jesus concluded: "Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart."

Notice the word "So". The original Greek word here can be translated "thus" and "in this way". In some versions it is rendered as "also". In the first edition of the New American Bible which I personally use the words are very explicit. This Greek word is translated "in exactly the same way". It means that his heavenly Father will "in exactly the same way" hand over those who do not forgive to torturers.

The logical question to ask is: Is Jesus' heavenly Father, God, also a torturer?

The logical answer can only be: Yes, Jesus' heavenly Father is also a torturer.

This shocked me a bit because we were not taught in our catechism classes or in our theological studies that our God can deliver us to torturers. Our usual image of God is a loving person who takes care of us and overlooks our sins.

But here we have a seemingly completely different picture of God, a God who hands us over to torturers. And the one who gives us this picture is no other than his son Jesus, who alone knows him best and most accurately.

Is this a true picture of God? After much meditation I agree with Jesus that this is a true picture of God. God can and does hand us over to torturers.

I would have thought that picturing God as a torturer is a blasphemy of our imagination, thinking of God in this way is a sin, a very serious sin. But this is one picture Jesus gives us of his Father. We need to know what we can learn from this picture.

It is somewhat surprising that not one of the twenty or so commentaries on this verse I read alluded to such a picture of God. Either they thought Jesus did not really mean what he said or he was using only a hyperbole, a figure of speech of exaggeration to drive home his point on the necessity and importance of forgiveness. Or they did not just care to comment on this remark of Jesus. Or they did not notice such a picture of God as given by Jesus.

But when we look at the whole picture, at the description of God in the Old and New Testaments we cannot fail to notice this description of God which comes from Jesus himself. God does hand over to torturers those who do not forgive their brothers and sisters in the faith.

The Bible, medical science, and common sense bear this out: God can and does hand over persons to torturers.

And we are fortunate that we have heard this from Jesus himself so that we can behave accordingly.

Maybe some of you have heard this distinction made between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. The distinction says that the God of the Old Testament was an angry God, one who went on killing his enemies, while the God of the New Testament is a loving God, wanting to save all. John 3:16 has been used to highlight this distinction. "Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life."

Some groups have even taught that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament.  These are the atheists, agnostics and secular humanists who follow the teachings of Marcion who existed in the second century.

The truth is that God's nature is the same in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. He was and is always a God who hates sin, who abhors iniquity, who keeps on purifying his people.

God destroyed completely the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, men, women, children, infants, animals and plants because of their sins. Only Lot and his two daughters survived. Look at the record in the Book of Numbers. Only 2 of the 603,550 Israelites aged 20 years old and above survived the journey from Egypt to the promised land, namely Joshua and Caleb. God caused the rest to die in the wilderness. God did not tolerate their disobedience and lack of faith. God commanded the Israelites to completely annihilate the Canaanites, including helpless and innocent infants. (Exodus 23:33, Deuteronomy 7:2, 16). God does punish and he punishes ruthlessly.

It is not without reason that he said, "Vengeance is mine" (Romans 12:19). For, indeed God does inflict vengeance on his enemies.

At the same time this God is most merciful. Our responsorial Psalm witnesses to this. This is one of my most favorite Psalms. It says, 'The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion. He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills. He redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with kindness and compassion. He will not always chide, nor does he keep his wrath forever. Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he requite us according to our crimes. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us.' And in Isaiah we read of God telling the Israelites, "It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I will remember no more." (43:25).

These two aspects of God are to be held by us together. God is just and gets rid of all unrighteousness. At the same time God is infinitely merciful and forgives us and forgets all the evils we have done against him.

The New Testament image of God is the same. God is just and winnows out the unjust. Jesus pronounced woes or curses on the cities which rejected him, namely Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida (Matthew 11:21-23). They are even now only ruins, not fit for a dwelling place. He pronounced woes also against the Scribes and Pharisees. They were soon tortured, driven to other lands, reduced to only a memory.

And yet this same Jesus forgave those who crucified him, forgave his chief persecutor, Saul, and transformed him to Paul, the Apostle to the non-Jews.

God does deliver people to torturers. The Bible says so. And God does forgive and forgets the offence done against him.

Medical science also gives the same verdict although some medical scientists do not believe in God.

In the website ethoughts.org a story is told about a minister who after 20 years concluded that over 90 percent of all health problems are rooted in unforgiveness. "90 percent of all health, marital, family, and financial problems came from unforgiveness."

Those who do not forgive are indeed tortured by their conscience, by their mind. It is God who designed that their minds are so tortured with distress, regrets, worries, which produce psychological and physical problems in their personality make-up.

Here are statements from other websites: "Unforgiveness causes a lot of stress and a lot of health problems. This can cause fear, depression, frustration, anxiety, self-hatred, and loneliness. It's quite a catalogue of problems, isn't it?"

Medical science shows that God tortures those who do not forgive by producing all kinds of problems in their life. I guess that if all forgive one another, our hospitals and clinics would immediately be half empty.

Common sense also tells us that God can and does torture those who do not forgive their brothers and sisters in the faith. The history of wars waged by Christians against other Christians attests to this. Common sense tells us that wars are the fruit of unforgiveness among nations. Those who engage in these wars are professed Christians. In the movie CROMWELL we see the absurdity of one group of Christians calling on God to kill their enemy Christians who also at almost the same time call on God to kill the first group of Christians. The result? God tortures both of them with dead and wounded soldiers, with widows and orphans.

The first reading is very clear about the evils of unforgiveness and the benefits of forgiveness.   Sirach says, 'Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the LORD's vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail."

And our second reading tells us the reason why we need to forgive. Our life is no longer our own. St. Paul says, "Brothers and sisters: None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself."

Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Thank you, Jesus, for giving us a clearer picture of your and our heavenly Father. We now realize that your heavenly Father who is also our heavenly Father is a just and righteous God who infinitely hates sin but is most merciful to us. We who are his children can only imitate him and forgive from our heart those who have wronged us so that we enjoy the best of health. 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.

Fourth Sunday of Lent 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).

Strength for the Weak

Today most of us are aware that there are two kinds of sins, mortal and venial. Many of us cannot give the technical distinction between these two kinds of sins as taught by the Church. Our idea mostly is that mortal sin is big sin and venial sin is small sin.

In the Old Testament we do not find such a distinction as mortal sin and venial sin. But there is another kind of distinction of sins in the Old Testament. The distinction begins in the Book of Leviticus, chapters 4 and 5. It is made clearer in Numbers 15:20-31. The two sins are: 1) sins through inadvertence, unwittingly done; and 2) sins through defiance, knowingly and willfully done. In the Old Testament only the first kind of sin could be forgiven. The second kind could not be forgiven. No amount of sacrifice could forgive this sin. Here is the judgment of God about this second kind of sin.

"But anyone who sins defiantly, whether he be a native or an alien, insults the Lord, and shall be cut off from among the people. Since he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken his commandment, he must be cut off. He has only himself to blame." Numbers 15:30-31.

In the New Testament Jesus also made a distinction between two kinds of sin: 1) sins against him which was pardonable; 2) sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which can never be pardoned. (Luke 12:10)

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that if we sin willfully after receiving the truth, there remains for us no further sacrifice for sins, only a fearful expectation of judgment and a flaming fire to consume the adversaries of God. (10:26).

When Jesus asked forgiveness for those who crucified him he had a condition attached to this forgiveness: "they know not what they are doing." Luke 23:34.

In the Gospel reading today there is a class of people whom the Scribes and Pharisees condemned as sinners: the tax collectors and prostitutes. But Jesus did not condemn them. In fact he welcomed them. This made the Scribes and Pharisees suspect that Jesus was in truth a sinner because he associated with them. To point out the real situation of these tax collectors and prostitutes Jesus spoke the beautiful and wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son. Some Bible scholars say that this story should be entitled the parable of the Prodigal Father because the father there was so wasteful of his resources, perhaps more than his son.

In this parable Jesus taught that these tax collectors and prostitutes who were represented by the younger son who indulged in riotous living were sinners who were not really aware of what they were doing. In the Old Testament language they sinned inadvertently. They committed sins of weakness. They did not commit sins of defiance. It was the Scribes and Pharisees who condemned these tax collectors who committed the sin of defiance.

Here we see the mentality of Jesus. He was always on the side of the oppressed, the weak, the downtrodden in society.

There is no place for defiant sinners in the company of Jesus, only for sinners who are so by weakness. These tax collectors and prostitutes were aware that they were weak. They knew they were in the wrong work. And they perceived that Jesus could give them the strength to get out of their work. When Jesus forgives he transforms weakness into strength. When he said to a person, "Do not sin", the person addressed to would not sin anymore.

For many years now I have been sinning against the second commandment which says, You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. Even today I still commit this sin. But Jesus has not abandoned me. He still loves me and makes me feel that he still receives and loves me.

This sin is something that I have inherited from my parents and those around me. When I am surprised, I utter the interjection "sus!" which is from the name of Jesus. Many priests and nuns and other religious teachers have told me that this is taking the name of Jesus in vain. I agree. But I just cannot stop myself from uttering "sus" when I am surprised. When I utter this syllable I am not even aware of it. It truly is for me a sin of inadvertence.

Does Jesus condemn me? Not at all. He never struck my mouth or put a disease into my tongue for taking his name in vain. But the priests, nuns and religious teachers condemn me. The same story happens again. The teachers of religion condemn those weak people whom Jesus welcomes. Jesus continues to deal with me as with a most intimate friend. I know in time he will get rid of this bad habit in me, as he had gotten rid of my other bad habits before. I do not say that I will get rid of that bad habit. Jesus will get rid of that for me. That is how faithful and profitable his friendship is. He transforms my weakness into strength.

What weaknesses do you suffer? Weaknesses in your sex life? In the use of other people's money? In laziness in your work or study? Jesus can turn these weaknesses into strengths. Give over your weakness to Jesus. Let him handle it. He certainly will make you strong.

Let me end with that lovely hymn our brothers and sisters in faith have sang for more than a century now.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,

Calling for you and for me.

See, on the portals he's waiting and watching,

Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home.

Ye who are weary, come home.

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home.

(from Majesty Hymns, pages 325-326)

Bowing our heads let us pray.

Lord Jesus, we acknowledge our weakness. This is the cause of our sins. Forgive us. Make us strong through our weakness by fully depending on you in everything. Amen.