21st Sunday after Pentecost – October 21,
2012
Epistle: Ephesians
6: 10-17 Gospel: Matthew 18:
23-35
Just
before today’s parable of the ungrateful servant, at Matthew 18: 21, 22, Peter asked Jesus how often
he must forgive those who wrong him, and Jesus told him seventy times seven,
meaning we must always forgive those who trespass against us. How different we
are from God. We often want revenge and vengeance, but God is willing to
forgive all that we owe to His justice. He forgives us in order to teach us to
do the same to each other.
We are not concerned today with
impatience and irritability we feel to those who wrong us. These are not
serious sins, even though we should confess them because they easily lead to
serious sins. But anger against those who wrong us is a violence in the soul
which rejects everything and anything that is displeasing to it.
There is also a holy anger, which is
called zeal. Holy zeal is the turbulence in the soul that we feel when we stand
up in defense of God and of our religion. In the Bible we have seen this in
Moses when he came down from the mountain and found the people worshiping a
golden calf (Exodus 32). He had many slain who
worshipped the golden calf. We saw this zeal in Jesus when He threw the
merchants out of the Temple. Jesus called all of them thieves, but were all of
them thieves because they were all cheating the people who bought from them? Some
were, but certainly not all of them. But all cheated God out of His House of
Prayer by turning it into a commercial enterprise. That is what made them
thieves.
Coming back to anger, the Prophet
Isaias tells us that a man in anger is like water stirred up by a storm. Heaven
can be pictured as a calm sea that reflects the beauty of the stars above. But
a storm disturbs the water and the reflections disappear. If we are patient and
gentle, we reflect the image of our Lord. But when anger and impatience disturb
us, the image of God disappears and is replaced by the image of a turbulent and
evil spirit.
What comes out of an evil spirit? Quarreling,
harshness, hatred, revenge - all the emotions of an angry person. What come out
of his mouth are curses, not blessings. In some homes neither husband nor wife
will give in and there is continuous quarreling, anger and cursing. And what do
their children learn growing up in such a home? Certainly not charity, patience
or gentleness because the home they live in is hell on earth. Anger becomes
hereditary in homes like that, because children who grow up with anger pass it
down to their children.
Our
tongues were given to us to praise God, and they are consecrated to him in
Baptism and Holy Communion. But with anger comes cursing, blasphemy and
slander. Our tongues were not made for that.
The person who gives himself over to
anger and passion is very unfortunate. He forces God to punish him. To avoid
this punishment yourself, take a good look at the suffering in the world and
let it remind you that it is only justice - that as we have revolted against
God, so others will revolt against us and hurt us. Do not give others reason to
curse and swear. If something happens contrary to what you want, don’t fly into
a rage. Rather, say, “God bless you.” Read the Book of Job in the Bible and act
like him. He felt all the effects of poverty, the pain of sickness and anguish
of sorrow over the deaths of his children. All this was sent to him to test
him, but Job never revolted against God, Whom he loved above all things. As St.
Paul put it in Ephesians 4:
26, “Be angry:
and sin not.” Our emotions are part of our human makeup. They are neither good
nor bad. Emotions become bad if we let them rule us. We are given dominion over
the earth, and we are also given dominion or rule over our emotions. Controlling
our emotions allows us to concentrate on why we were placed on earth, and that
is to know, to love and to serve God.
In today’s Epistle, St. Paul says,
“Put you on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits
of the devil.” This armor of God is our religion, the Mass the Sacraments and
prayer. One of the great deceits of Satan is that when someone wrongs us we
have a right to be angry. This temptation plays to our egos, which tell us that
we are important and we should get our way. If this were true our lives would
be intolerable because we often do not get our way. Remember that we are
required to forgive seventy times seven times. Do we have a right then to be angry when we
are wronged? No, but we do have a right and a duty to be zealous in defense of
God.
Our Lord he certainly had a right to
be angry with those who were killing Him. Instead He asked His Father to
forgive them because they did not know what they were doing. But death could
not take our Lord. As He hung on the cross He cried out in a loud voice to show
us that He had the strength not to die, but that He willed it. St. Athanasius
tells us He hung His head and that was the invitation to death to take Him. He
demonstrated what He taught, that a greater love than this no man has, that a
man lay down his life for his friends. In this way, Jesus Christ died of love,
leaving anger behind and praying for His murderers. +++
We Celebrate the Traditional Tridentine
Latin Mass
