Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time at Mississippi Abbey

Scripture Readings: Sir 27:30-28:7; Rom 14:7-9; Mt 18:21-35

Our monastic life is made up of a series of spiritual practices. These include, among others, chanting the Office, celebrating Eucharist, and observing times of private prayer. The entire day is composed of spiritual practices. They are intended to deepen our relationship with God. These practices shape our way of thinking and our wills. They do this for each of us by using one’s body, one’s soul (mind) and one’s spirit (heart). We use these dimensions of our existence as individuals and as a community. Because these spiritual practices structure our day and express common values, we enter community believing we have a common ethic. After all, we live by a Rule and the gospels. But… “It ain’t necessarily so.” So today we are given the spiritual practice of forgiveness.

Being a monastic is important to each of us. It makes a difference—an important difference—and so we care about it deeply. It affects the way we perceive the events of our lives, what we pay attention to. It puts into action our disposition for the noble. It is our identity, who we know ourselves to be and desire to become. Identity is best understood by looking at our most important relationships…and they are in community. These three dimensions are integrated by means of committed action to form one’s character. Our aim is to develop the character of Jesus Christ. We have found what matters most.

We cherish having that in common with one another. It forms relationships so close that we call one another “brother” and “sister.”  We share a closeness at our very deepest level. So, when we hurt another or become hurt in these relationships, it can be devastating. We didn’t think it could happen. But it has.

In today’s gospel the offense is financial. That is not likely to be the case in the monastery. The offense is likely much deeper, and more personal.

Since forgiveness is an important spiritual practice we are likely to employ it, but what happens if the offender is unrepentant, if she defends her mistake? It seems possible, even likely, that the offender would offend again… and perhaps they do! How does one get over it if it’s not over? One can forgive, but an unrepentant offender will not experience it and the victim will need to “on guard.”

In the gospel, the unforgiving servant is handed over to torturers. The unforgiving remain in bondage to the past; their torture is that the past offense still determines their present behavior and feelings. That’s a hard way to live in community.

So we begin our day around the Eucharistic table enacting forgiveness ritually so that we can perform it away from the table. In other words, we live by something more important than the offense and the offender. We keep our commitment to what matters most. We’ll still feel the pain (that’s why the offense is called a “sin”), but it will not distort our perception through constant attention to it; it will not sour our disposition toward the noble by turning us to vengeance; and our identity as a disciple of Christ will remain constant.

The constancy of our discipleship is the key factor in forgiveness. Injury reminds us of our vulnerability, our powerlessness. It is then that we sincerely seek the power only God can give. “Call on me in the day of distress” the psalmist says. We call on Him for help because we remember when He forgave us…and how it transformed our lives. We give the glory to Him. And then, as monks and nuns, we will forever live in grateful contemplation of He Who presides over us all.                               

 

 

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time at Mississippi Abbey

Scripture Readings: Sir 27:30-28:7; Rom 14:7-9; Mt 18:21-3

A 12 year-old girl had an unusually beautiful singing voice. Her parents weren’t sure whether to send her to music school or have her voice professionally trained. They asked a celebrated musician to listen to her and advise them. She sang for him. When she finished there was a long silence. Finally he spoke. “She sings beautifully,” he said, “When her heart has been broken, she will sing sublimely.”  Why is that? 

There is a difference between what breaks the heart of a little girl and what breaks the heart of a woman. Why is that?  Recall a time when you have been loved beyond what you knew yourself to deserve. 

A short time ago we chanted in Psalm 50 that “God does not spurn a broken heart.” Our hearts are vulnerable to what they are set upon. When the heart is set upon something less than God, it is set upon something that can be lost. And when it is lost and the heart broken, and if, rather than fix it, we listen to it, we may find God, Whom we can never lack when we love Him.

The wicked servant’s problem is that his heart was not broken by being forgiven, by being loved beyond what he knew himself to deserve. His pride was too great. He forgot something. As Deuteronomy 8 says, when we forget Who brought us out of the land of Egypt, the place of bondage, we become “haughty of heart.” Moses said to never forget this because, “Otherwise, you might say to yourselves, ‘It is my own power and the strength of my own hand that has obtained for me this wealth.’”

Love is seeking the good of the other for the other’s own sake. Our hearts find it difficult to believe that we can be loved without achievement. Since the world we know does not run on unconditional love, the heart finds it difficult to accept the gift of love as true. So the heart sets out to make sure of its own lovableness by its own striving.

Because God is love and we are made in His image and likeness, we don’t invent love; we participate in it. God first loved us.We are commanded to devote our lives to passing it on. Similarly, as the master first forgave the servant, and as Moses reminds us, God first forgave us so we are to pass it on. And as the Lord’s Prayer reminds us, if we pass it on it will come “back to us like a bad penny” that has been shined up!

The wicked servant sinned when he failed to give his master what was due. And he sinned again when he failed to pass on forgiveness to his fellow servant. Sin arises out of our striving to protect the lovable self we have made in order to avoid vulnerability. In short, sin arises out of pride.

It is said that God holds each of us by a string. When we sin, we break the string, the connection between self and God. When we realize we have broken it and ask for forgiveness He ties the string and thus makes it a little shorter. We sin and repent again and again and He keeps tying it and thus drawing us gradually closer to Him. The key here is realizing our wrong and our forgiveness. To do this we must renounce pride. We break the power of sin when we realize that we are in fact so much loved apart from our achievements and our virtue.

The precise and definite aim of the Cross of Christ is to destroy our pride by persuading us to accept a gift which we do not deserve, by giving us something we could not possible pay for. There is no more dangerous or subtle pride than the pride of being righteous without God’s help.

So again I ask, have you ever been loved beyond what you knew yourself to deserve?  Did it break your heart?  Forgive your sister from the heart…a broken heart that has been listened to.