Father Randy Koenigsknecht
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God’s mercy cannot be earned, yet it is freely offered to us through Jesus Christ. This homily reflects on our relationship with the Lord, the freedom found in His forgiveness, and His challenging call to forgive others from the heart.
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Last week, Father Chas spoke to us about the reading from Ezekiel and the call to be watchmen. You know, each of us is called to watch out for our brothers and sisters, to help point them to the Lord, help them to see dangers, pitfalls that lie before them that are coming their way. Now, specifically as priests, Father Chas and I have a duty to do that for you guys, to point out the dangers that are around us, to point out the common pitfalls that we might fall into.
Now, today’s readings, they scream watchmen, they scream pay attention, warn, why? Because what do we hear in Sirach? Remember your last days, set enmity aside, remember death and decay, cease from sin, think of the commandments, remember the Most High’s covenant, remember these things, look at these things, put them before your eyes, why? Why do we need to remember death, why do we need to remember the last days? Because as it also says, in those days the vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, it will come the day of judgment. Now do we want to say that God is vengeful? Is that an attribute we want to put on God? Is that who God is? Well, the answer to that is a little complicated. So we know God is love, God is mercy, He’s patient, He’s just, all those things.
The change happens in us. So when we position ourselves in a way that cannot exist with God, that cannot coexist with Him, the God who is love in life itself, we experience the opposite of that. We experience what we feel as vengeance, we suffer, we experience death, we’ve willingly turned away from the God who is love itself.
And that’s what we experience now. And that’s what hell is, hell is nothing else than what is not God. The absence of God, the absence of life, the absence of love, of mercy, of all those things that make God who God is.
That’s what that experience is. Now you might be tempted to say, well, isn’t hell just for the really bad people? People who do terrible things? Do I really need to be that concerned about death and decay? I mean, I’m in church. Shouldn’t I be Ring one of the ones on the inside? Aren’t I all set? Well, Jesus gives us this long warning parable for a reason.
There’s two servants. The one servant is indebted to the master, says a great amount. The original language actually gives a number to it, 10,000 talents, a myriad of talents.
The equivalent of about 5,000 lifetimes of daily wages. So the servant goes to the master and he says, be patient, I’ll pay you back. That dude is lying.
He’s not paying him back. That’s not going to happen. There’s no way.
There’s no repayment plan for that. In modern day money, it’s the equivalent of like a small country that he owes this guy. It’s not happening.
But what does the master do? He doesn’t put him on the repayment plan. He forgives the debt entirely, takes it away, welcomes him back home, back into the fold. Now, that servant, he has another fellow servant who owes him a small amount, about 100 days wages, an amount that actually could be repaid reasonably.
And unlike the master, he doesn’t show him mercy. He throws him in chains, throws him in prison. And the master finds out about this and he comes to that servant and he says to him, I forgave you your debt.
Could you not forgive your fellow servant’s debt? And it says that he hands him over to the torturers. And the next line should be very striking to us. He says, and so will my heavenly father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.
Who’s you? Who does Jesus actually say that line to? We may be tempted to think, well, he says that to the Pharisees, the Sadducees, you know, these people who, you know, sort of know the law and should know better, but often don’t quite get there. They don’t have the heart of it. Maybe we’re tempted to think, well, he’s saying that to the crowd.
He’s saying to the people who follow him lightly, but are not really committed. No, he doesn’t say that to those people. He says this to Peter.
He says that warning to the head of the apostles, to the one who will be the first pope. So will my father do to you, Peter, unless you forgive your brother from your heart. And I was struck earlier in the week on Friday, the daily readings, we heard from St. Paul, and he talks about his duty to proclaim the gospel and how he’s been doing that in all these various countries and nations.
And Paul says something kind of striking. He says, I drive my body, I train myself for fear that after having preached to others, I myself shall be disqualified. That despite all the good that he has done, all the people that he has preached to, all the miracles that he has worked, despite doing all those things, that he could still fail to miss it, that he could miss out, that that’s a reality for him.
How is that the case? Why is that the case? Well, it’s because the life of heaven, life with God, it’s not a matter of doing enough good. It’s not a matter of making up for all the wrong that we’ve done, somehow balancing that out as if we could, or just basically being a good person. It’s about a relationship.
It’s about who do you know? It’s about do I know the person? Because heaven, the life of heaven is a person. It’s living with God, living with him, living with our brothers and sisters. Our readings, they’re so focused today on unforgiveness, because that is so contrary and incompatible to relationship with God, to truly living with him.
Because mercy is such an intrinsic part of his character. And that if our father is willing to forgive our brothers and sisters, to wipe away their debt, how can we not do the same? How can we claim to be united to him if where he forgives, we hold guilty? We still hold for vengeance. And so you may be tempted and drawn to fear by this kind of reality we’re living in.
Of, okay, well, if Peter and Paul are worried about making it, what chance do I got? You know, I got to get my ducks in a row, I got to start working on stuff, I got to clean this stuff up, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, on and on. But you’re still missing the point. That’s a natural reaction, but it’s wrong.
Because you’re still focused on it’s what I do that gets me there. No, it’s not what you do, it’s who you know. And what you do should probably better correspond to who you know.
But it starts with knowing Jesus, starts with knowing the Lord, following him. And that guides and directs what you do, how you live your life. We don’t earn our way into heaven.
We don’t have to be anxious about it. Yes, we have to, like Paul, drive and train ourselves. We have to keep our eyes remembering our death, remembering what’s to come.
We don’t have to live with anxiety. Why? Because we know who we’re going to stand before. At the end of my life, I’m not, probably not going to be terribly worried about whether I’m, you know, going to go to hell or not.
Not because I’ve got it all together, not because I know I’m perfect and I’ve done enough good things, I’ve preached the gospel, all this stuff. No. I’m going to be pretty confident and feeling okay because I know the one who is judging me.
I’ve followed him all my life. I consider him a great friend. I’ve given my life to him.
Our judge is in your back pocket. He’s on your side. You know? And so we don’t have to live out of fear.
The goal isn’t, well, okay, I’ve got to do all this stuff. The goal is how close can I get to him? The one who really matters, the one who I want to live with in heaven. How close can I get to him here and now on this earth? What can I all do? I was deeply moved recently by a testimony of a priest who began to live life this way.
His world had been rocked. His name is Father Jim. He was diagnosed with ALS.
And so at the point I heard him speak in a conference, it had been several years. He was already in a wheelchair. The disease was running its course on him.
But he spoke with such joy, he spoke with such life, and he spoke about how this had changed him. Because when he received the diagnosis and he knew that his death was coming, his days were very numbered. And he said, I want to leave it all on the field.
I don’t want to settle for mediocrity. Not anymore. And so he began to take that attitude into his relationship with God, into his ministry and his parish.
Instead of living out of that fear of failure, or that just kind of apathy that we can sometimes have, he’s like, let’s go for it. We’re going to do it. Yes, working with wisdom and prudence, but we’re going to go for it.
I’m going to give everything. That changed him. That changed his parish.
And it’s just so striking, like, that’s what happens to a priest. That’s what happens to us. When I give my life fully to the Lord, I experience that joy in life, because I start to live the life of heaven, because heaven’s about a person.
And the more I live with him here and now, the more I begin to experience that life right here, and heaven begins to break through, and amazing things happen. And so today, this is a time and a day just for really an honest look at ourselves. You know, to remember, to remember our last days, to remember death and decay, to remember what lies before us, and to ask some questions.
Do I have that real relation with the Lord? Do my actions concretely reflect the person that I say I believe in, that I follow? Those correspond in my life. When was the last time I went to confession? Has it been over a year? It’s time to change that, to come back home, to go before the master who receives us with love, who forgives our debts. And most importantly today, is there someone that I need to forgive? It’s one of the few things that can really strongly block God working our lives.
It says in our Father, forgive us our trespasses, we forgive those who trespass against us. Am I willing to begin to imitate my Heavenly Father as He deals with my brothers and sisters? Am I willing to deal with them the same way? I remember forgiveness, it doesn’t mean we forgive and forget, no, absolutely not. It doesn’t mean that there’s reconciliation, that you go back into the same relationship.
But am I willing to let go of that judgment, of the vengeance that I desire, the debt that I know that they’re owing against me? Because when we have a hold on forgiveness, we’re counting the cost of what they owe us. Am I willing to take that step, to be like my Father and forgive my brother and sister? To forgive the debt against them? And maybe you’re not quite in that place. Alright, do I at least want to want to forgive them? It’s a very low bar.
Because if I do, then I can start asking, Lord, make me want it for real. I want to want this. But to start that process, like I said, heaven can begin now.
That we can begin to live this new way of life. We don’t have to be anxious. We don’t have to be consumed with doing more things and trying to prove ourselves and, you know, fix our relationship with the Lord.
But that we can come to Him, just openly, honestly. We can be received by Him with love. Just begin to live from that place of freedom.
I belong to You, Lord. I am Yours. And we can have deep joy, deep life.
And it will be a life that will draw other people to us and to the Lord who gives us life.