Forgive!
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.
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.
