HOMILY Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Sept 13, 2020

 HOMILY    Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time    Sept 13, 2020

           Our Gospel today raises an interesting question:  In your relationship with God do you desire Justice, or do you desire Mercy?   When you come to the end of your life, which is surely coming, do you want what you deserve, that is Justice, or do you want Mercy, which is always not-deserved, not earned, not merited, but rather freely, gratuitously given?

          Justice is transactional.  It is clear.  It is simple.   We like justice because we want to earn our own way.  If we have earned it, then we have a claim on it.  We have accomplished it.  It belongs to us by right.

          But mercy is relational.  It doesn’t depend on us.  We have no right, no claim to mercy.  Mercy depends on another.  We are not in charge.  It is beyond our doing. 

          Mercy is also difficult because it is transformational.  Divine forgiveness, if accepted, if allowed to reside in us, if truly taken into us and made a part of us, changes us.  Because mercy is not earned, is not deserved, is not dependent on anything we do, to truly accept that mercy and be molded by it, changes us to be merciful to others in turn.  We must resemble and practice what we have been given in order to truly own it.

          The servant in the Gospel who is a debtor, who owes a huge amount, literally 10,000 talents, an enormous amount of money that he could never pay back, receives mercy.  But he is not changed by it.  He does not truly accept mercy, does not interiorize it, is not changed by such overwhelming forgiveness.  He still acts out of the mentality of what is earned and what is owed.  He seizes a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii, a much smaller amount, and reverts to acting out of transaction rather than transformation.

          His refusal to be transformed causes him to loose the overwhelming mercy shown to him.  It is a tragedy of shortsighted selfishness.

          When we stand before God, the last thing we should want is what we are owed, what we deserve.  What we really need is not justice, but mercy.   Mercy. 

          However, divine mercy is not just a commodity, an object, but rather a relationship.  It is by its very nature not earned, but freely given.  It must be freely accepted.  And the accepting of mercy means we need to change.  We cannot then stand on our own goodness, on what belongs to us by right, because we earned it.  Mercy is given freely with no assurance that we somehow deserve it or that it is ours.

          Divine mercy changes us.  If it does not change you, then you have never accepted it.  Divine mercy transforms us IF we open ourselves in humility, and allow God’s mercy to work in us. 

          And at the end of life, what we want, what we need, what we hope for, is mercy.