Same Words, Different Results

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

St. Thomas Aquinas

   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I served at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing as a parochial vicar, I spent a fair amount of time in our parish school.  One day I was asked by a teacher to come over at the end of the school day to talk to a few students who had been picking on another kid, such that the other kid had locked himself in a bathroom stall and brought to tears.  I pulled the two students aside into a classroom and asked them what had happened.  They explained that they had continuously stolen and hidden the other student’s folder, seeing how upset it made him.  I asked them why they would do such a thing.  The responded that they didn’t think it would affect him so much.  I said, “That’s right; you didn’t think.”  After that point, things become a bit hazy in my memory, but I remember thinking to myself after those words came out of my mouth, ‘I have become my father,’ because my dad would say the same thing to me if I had done something wrong and had responded that I didn’t think such and such would happen.
    I was struck in today’s Gospel by the words that the servant uses to the master when his freedom is threatened: “‘“Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.”’”  Later that same day he hears those same words from another servant who owed the first servant much smaller amounts than the first servant owed the master: “‘“Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.”’”  But apparently the light didn’t come on in the first servant’s head, and rather than recognizing that he was now in the position of the master to be generous and patient, the first servant took immediate and decisive action to put the other servant in debtor’s jail until he could pay back what he owed.  Where the master was patient and lenient, the servant was intolerant and rigorous.  

    One of the great blessings God has given us is the Sacrament of Penance, what we often call confession.  And I try to offer generous times for the celebration of God’s mercy in this sacrament.  I am also pleased that so many people, from both our parish and from other parishes, take advantage of these opportunities.  I myself try to go to confession every two or three weeks.  Besides the primary effect of forgiveness of sins (especially if we are in a state of mortal sin), as well as giving us grace to avoid temptation in the future, one of the graces that God desires to give us is to make us more like Him, our Master, in His Mercy.  
    People can often confuse mercy with license.  Especially in today’s culture, where no one takes responsibility for anything, mercy tends to mean letting me get away with something I have done.  But a priest I recently heard at convocation said that, in order to receive mercy, we have to acknowledge what is just.  And this priest used the example of the prodigal son to back up his point.  We are very quick to jump to the part of the parable where the father runs out to meet his son and puts a ring on his finger, a robe around him, and sandals on his feet, and throws a big party.  But right before that, the son acknowledges that he has sinned against heaven and against his father, and he no longer deserves to be called a son.  This priest made the point that it was because the prodigal son made that admission in justice that the father granted mercy and restored him to his previous place in family life.  Imagine if the son would have come back and simply said, “Could I have a job?”  
    Now, these two points may seem contradictory.  The parable from today’s Gospel highlights mercy, while the parable of the Prodigal Son seems to highlight justice.  But both are truly operative, and both guide how we show mercy.  In the Gospel parable the servant says that he will pay the master back.  He admits the justice.  And that admission of justice opens up mercy, a mercy which does not have a timeline.  It restores the relationship immediately, and even cancels.  And we are invited to have that same level of mercy.  When someone admits that they have wronged us, we should be ready to grant them mercy, just as God grants us mercy as soon as we confess our faults in the Sacrament of Penance.  As long as we will try not to commit that sin again, even if we think it would take a miracle to avoid those temptations, then God will forgive us.  If someone admits to us that he or she is wrong, then Christ calls us to be like the merciful Father and immediately grant mercy.
    To drive home this point even more, the Lord says elsewhere that the measure we measure out to others will in turn be measured out to us.  If we come before God, admitting our faults, and expect God to forgive us, then we should also forgive those who come to us and admit their faults.  If we do not, then how can God grant mercy to a heart that is hardened?  If we have no mercy for others in our life, then we have no room for the mercy of God, either.  If we are not willing to receive another’s act of contrition, then how could God receive ours?
    Probably many of us of a certain age have had those moments where we think: ‘I have become my parents.’  And maybe sometimes that idea scares us.  But it should be the goal of each one of us to become like our heavenly Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.