Comments on the liturgy of the day taken from the September/October 2020 issue of the “Sulla Tua Parola” missal.
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
4th week psalter
FIRST READING
From the Book of Sirach (Sir 27:33 – 28:9 (NV) [gr. 27:30 – 28:7])
Resentment and anger are horrible things, and the sinner carries them within. Whoever takes revenge will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, who always keeps his sins in mind. Forgive your neighbor’s offense, and then, when you pray, your sins will be forgiven. If a man harbors anger against another man, how can he ask the Lord for healing? If he has no mercy on someone like himself, how can he plead for his own sins? If he, who is only flesh, harbors resentment, how can he obtain God’s forgiveness? Who will atone for his sins? Remember the end and stop hating; remember corruption and death, and remain faithful to the commandments. Remember the precepts and do not hate your neighbor; remember the covenant of the Most High and overlook the faults of others. The word of God.
Commentary on the first reading
There are some books of the Bible that are seldom read in our liturgies. Today’s first reading comes from one of them: Sirach. It is an unusual word, so it may be useful to spend a few words on it. This is a book of the Old Testament, composed around 180 BC and translated into Greek in 132 BC. Its author is a man named Jesus son of Sirach, and in its 51 chapters it compends much of the wisdom of Jewish tradition: rules of courtesy, precepts, respect for worship, overcoming life’s trials, fear of God, and right relationships with political authority and with one’s neighbor. Today our Jesus son of Sirach appears almost like a prophet, anticipating what would become one of the themes of the Lord’s Prayer of another Jesus, the Son of God. He gives an urgent invitation to base our relationships on mercy and forgiveness, to banish revenge from our lives, linking these choices to God’s own action toward us. It is comforting to know that when we listen to the deep promptings of the heart, we already find the seed of the presence of the Lord Jesus, eternal as the Father.
SECOND READING
From the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Romans (Rom 14:7-9)
Brothers and sisters, none of us lives for himself, and no one dies for himself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life: that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. The word of God.
Commentary on the second reading
What could be sadder than living for oneself? A person who lives closed in on himself, always focused on his needs and desires, experiences death in advance. Life is essentially relationship. We do not give ourselves life on our own; we need others in order to grow, learn, and love. And among all the others there is the Other, God, the only one capable of giving eternal meaning to everything that seems finite and contingent. If living for oneself is a sign of a serious illness, and if living for others can sometimes lead to disappointment and make us experience the limits of every relationship, it is only by living for God, who remains forever, that we can experience a meaning of life untouched by the virus of death and limitation. The apostle Paul strongly reminds the Christians of Rome of this truth. Living for the Lord does not mean, first and foremost and solely, living to serve him; it also means living thanks to him. I am alive thanks to you, my God, or, as the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani liked to say, “I am You who make me.” Life finds the eternal horizon of each of its moments.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
From the Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 18:21-35)
At that time, Peter approached Jesus and said to him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered him, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a servant was brought before him who owed him ten thousand talents. Since he was unable to repay it, his master ordered that he be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, and payment be made. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.’ Moved with compassion, the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred denarii. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you.’ But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.” The Gospel of the Lord.
Commentary on the Gospel of the day
In the Bible, numbers are never merely numbers. Just as in everyday life we use expressions containing numbers whose meaning goes beyond their literal sense (think of phrases such as, “Let’s take a few steps,” or, “Let’s have a couple of bowls of spaghetti,” which mean much more than they say), so in the Bible the number seven always represents the completion of God’s work. It refers to the Sabbath, the preeminent sacred day; it indicates the perfection of God’s work, which, completed in six days, finds its contemplation on the seventh. The apostle Peter, asking how often he should forgive his brother, thinks he will make a good impression; he has shot for the maximum the human mind can conceive. Jesus takes this maximum and carries it into infinity. Only infinity, in fact, can be the unit of measurement for love and, therefore, for forgiveness. Jesus uses a parable to enable Peter, and us, to formulate the appropriate answer. The parable has the power to place us within the situation; it challenges us to look inside ourselves and understand which of the characters we identify with. How mean-spirited that wicked servant must have been: forgiven, yet unwilling to forgive! And what about our hearts?
