Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Ecclus 27.30 – 28.7;
Ps 102;
Rom 14.7-9;
Mt 18.21-35
If someone nurses anger against another,
can he then demand compassion from the Lord?
During Mass, we begin by saying, “I confess to almighty God…that I have sinned,” feeling capable of this affirmation with everyone else present. But how sincere are we, and do we truly intend to act on it? How frequently do we actually go to confession? Likely not as often as our conscience urges.
We often shy away from the sacrament due to guilt, shame, fear of judgment, or a false view that prayer alone suffices. We prefer to think we can manage our weaknesses and avoid exposing our sins, especially to a priest. Though prayers of contrition are valuable, they are not the same as confession. Jesus gave His disciples, and through them the Church's priests, the power to judge, bind, and loose—highlighting the importance of this sacrament over mere prayer.
What is the sacrament of confession? It is, above all, a sign of God’s mercy and love. We can come to him in the sacrament with absolute certainty, secure in his promises. If we pray on our own, can we really be certain that God has heard and answered our prayer, that we have been forgiven for our sins? Are we not left with even a small degree of doubt and uncertainty? After all, it is we who are making the prayer, and we who are trying to discern God’s answer. But in the sacrament, God promises to be present; he promises the power of his Holy Spirit. We can be certain that he has forgiven all the sins that we have confessed. We know that we will also have committed minor sins that we did not realise, or that we have forgotten in the meantime; no matter, as long as we are sorry for them too, they are also forgiven. It is only if we have committed a serious sin and deliberately keep quiet about it that it remains unforgiven: indeed in these circumstances, we commit a further sin by making a deliberately bad confession. But if we make a good confession, with genuine contrition for all our sinfulness, we can be confident that when the priest says, “I absolve you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” that we are indeed absolved; for Jesus has said to His Church, “Whatever you loose on earth will be considered loosed in heaven.”
We have many examples in the life of our Lord when He shows His infinite mercy towards sinners. For example, when a woman who had committed adultery was brought to Him, He did not condone her sins, but He did forgive them. Her sin, the sin of adultery, was a capital offence, punishable by death according to Jewish law because of the seriousness of its nature; its seriousness made it what is sometimes called a mortal sin, one capable of bringing about death: not physical death, but death to our souls by separating us from Christ, the true life. And the Church teaches that one single mortal sin of which we have not repented at the time of our death will separate us forever from God, will send us to hell. It is not the Law of God which condemns us; we condemn ourselves. We have sinned, and we have failed to repent. But the Lord can transform our lives, can bring into them the power of his life-giving cross, to transform them and to make them once again a place of life and light. As we heard in the psalm, it is he who forgives all your guilt / who heals every one of your ills / who redeems your life from the grave / who crowns you with love and compassion.
And what do we have to do? We have to be sorry for what we have done, and we have to intend to try to improve. And it is here that the second aspect of the sacrament of confession is so important, something not available to us in the same way if we do not come to this sacrament but simply make our own private prayers for forgiveness. For in addition to God’s grace which forgives us, we receive even more grace, to help us to defeat sin, to give us strength to win the battle against the assaults of the devil. As well as dealing with what is past, God helps us to face what is still to come. And if that grace is to have its desired effect, we have to change. We must have at least the intention to do better.
And one area of our lives that all too often is among the most difficult to change concerns our judging others. We see them doing something, and we are quick to pass judgment. We may not know the full facts and circumstances; indeed, we rarely do. But does that stop us from jumping to a conclusion about what we have seen? And perhaps, based on that judgement, we say something to someone else. Or perhaps we feel someone has wronged us; how easy do we find it to forgive them? How often do we say the words in the ‘Our Father’, the prayer taught to us by Jesus Himself, without meaning them, without any intention of making them the basis for our behaviour, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” We say the words, but do we mean them? If we don’t, then today’s Old Testament reading has clear and strong words for us: ‘If someone nurses anger against another, can he then demand compassion from the Lord? Whoever exacts vengeance on his neighbour will experience the vengeance of the Lord, who keeps strict account of sin.’ God knows all our sins, but he also knows our desire to follow him, to improve with his help. He is a God of justice, but he is also a God of mercy and life. Christ died out of love for us, to free us from sin and eternal death. He takes the promise made by God through the writer of today’s Old Testament reading, ‘If you forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you, when you pray your sins will be forgiven you.’ And He adds His grace to that promise, His grace which can help us to forgive our neighbour, and so to win God’s favour. Without His grace, we will fail and fail again; but with His grace, which we can experience so often and so deeply in the sacrament of penance, we can and will become more and more like Him.
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