FORGIVE!

November 8, Monday

Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

 

 

      The First Reading in Year I will be taken for a whole week from the Book of Wisdom. It was written in Greek in Alexandria, the century before the Christian era. Although he hopes non-Jews to read it too, the author advises mainly his co-religionists to seek wisdom in their faith in God rather than in the surrounding philosophical culture of Alexandria.

      It is hard to place the sayings of our Gospel today (Lk 17:1-6) in a coherent context. They rather look like disparate statements about key concerns and messages of Luke: concern for the lowly, the need of forgiving one another, and faith. When Luke speaks about scandal, he is not thinking of giving any bad example, but of obstacles that make people stumble, like Jesus sitting at table with sinners, something totally unacceptable to many Jews. We take the message of forgiveness.

 

First Reading: Wisdom 1:1-7

Those who manage world affairs—the young would-be Alexanders in today’s society—should look long and hard at justice; they should take a no-nonsense attitude toward that moral virtue; they should seek the Lord in the simplicity of their heart. If managers want to find the Lord, they don’t have to hunt him down; he’ll walk in from the woods when he’s good and ready.

Thinking crooked thoughts means walking crooked miles; that’s no way to find God. Proven virtue, on the other hand, whistles down the straight and narrow, whisking the non-virtuous right off the road. No, Lady Wisdom doesn’t enter the malevolent soul, nor does she take up residence in a body mildewed with sin.

The spirit of discipline f lees the fictional, leaves behind the nonsensical, and won’t be corrupted by the spirit of the age. Lady Wisdom smiles upon humankind, but she doesn’t have a good thing to say about lips that lie, liars who cheat, or cheaters who take the name of the Lord in vain. Divine surveillance misses nothing; it picks up every move, hears every word; it scrutinizes hearts and scours souls. The Lord has no need of directions to find anyone, nor does he need an ear trumpet to hear everything.

 

Gospel: Luke 17:1-6

He said to his disciples, “Hard trials and temptations are bound to come, but too bad for whoever brings them on! Better to wear a millstone necklace and take a swim in the deep blue sea than give even one of these dear little ones a hard time!

“Be alert. If you see your friend going wrong, correct him. If he responds, forgive him. Even if it’s personal against you and repeated seven times through the day, and seven times he says, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,’ forgive him.”

The apostles came up and said to the Master, “Give us more faith.”

But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a poppy seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it.

 

Prayer

God of mercy and compassion,
your Son Jesus Christ, has brought us together
as a community of sinners
that knows that you have pardoned us.
When our weaknesses threaten our unity,
remind us of our responsibility for one another.
Let your unifying Spirit give us the strength
to care for one another
and to do all we can to remain
a living, forgiving and welcoming community.
May we meet in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:

The keeper of your brother

Evangelist Luke pays great attention on the command of Jesus to care for the poor and oppressed. He finds the social and economic situation of the poor of his community had a lot in common with the situation in the Jewish society, where Jesus lived. Although the members of the community professed the same faith, the division between the rich and the poor within the community could never be totally addressed and redressed.

Jesus says, leading a little one to sin is a more serious sin. For the evangelist Luke, the “little ones” that Jesus was referring to must have meant those poor and socially disadvantaged members of the Christian community or those who are frail in their Christian faith. They must have been struggling to maintain their faith in a secular world that did not care. Their struggle would have been compounded when the Christian community failed to accept and support them.
The danger was real. And words of Jesus that – it would be better to be drowned in the sea than to lead someone to sin – served to emphasise this seriousness. Jesus emphasises the obligation of every member of the Christian community to be responsible for their brothers and sisters, protecting and supporting them. It is indeed important for all to accept genuine responsibility for each other.
Forgiveness is an attitude that should identify a Christian, because it is the attitude of Jesus. When teaching the disciples to pray, Jesus had taught them that forgiving one another enables one to obtain God’s forgiveness. Jesus presented God’s forgiveness as an expression of God’s joy. But how often have we experienced the difficulty in forgiving those who have offended us? Forgiving becomes a difficulty or an impossibility when I hold on to the positions that I consider as right and demand the other to agree with my convictions. But that is not forgiveness. Can I give in and forgive the one who hurt me, in spite of knowing that he/she might repeat the same offence again? That is the challenge before the Christian.
The prayer of the Apostles needs to be our prayer today: “Lord, Increase our faith.” All what Jesus asks of his disciples is not for great faith – but simple faith. A little faith – even to the size of the mustard seed… But, can faith be measured in quantity? Jesus emphasises – your faith, however little it is, guarantees God’s providence.
Again, would any tree planted in the sea grow or even survive? Yes, it would! The Christian community had in fact been planted in an extremely hostile environment. In spite of the persecutions and killings, the survival and flourishing of the Christian community were purely the result of the providence of God.

Video available on Youtube: The keeper of your brother