St. Lawrence Church, Riegelsville recently issued the following announcement. 

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand the parable which Our Lord uses in today’s Gospel. What each of us need to be, is a person who is humble and courageous. 

In today’s Gospel, Our Lord issues a challenge to each of his followers to take a regular look within ourselves, and to examine the level of generosity with which we live our lives. It’s a terrible thing to be in debt………….debt of any kind: financial debt, health-related debt, job-related debt. But the worse kind of debt is to be in need or debt of forgiveness. It’s bad enough to be in debt over our finances, health or job, but with these there is always the hope and the ability to correct them, to recover from them. To be in need of forgiveness is another animal. To be in need of forgiveness is totally dependent on the goodness and generosity of another. This is the dynamic behind the parable which Our Lord uses this weekend. A servant has abused his master’s wealth, trust & public dignity; his actions have been revealed. According to the culture of that time, the master has every right to recover his wealth; he also has every right to use whatever means available to him to regain it, which includes selling the servant & his family into slavery. The servant owns his theft; admits that he is unable to make restitution; he begs for mercy. In an act of great generosity, the Master ignores his culture’s spirit of reciprocity, which holds that he would have the right to visit equal harm on the one who has harmed him; he forgives him of the entire debt. The Master doesn’t work out some kind of payment plan; rather, he lets go of the “Huge” debt, which his servant created for him. That’s mercy! That’s generosity! That’s imitating the love of his God! This is the point which Our Lord wants to impress upon his disciples; namely, that they need to discover the depth of the Father’s love for each of us. Even when we betray the father’s love time and time again; when we treat it as trivial; when we rack-up a “huge” debt; he is ready to let go of our debt. All he seeks from us is honesty, compassion and a willingness to change. God is not a score keeper; he is not up there with his spiritual ledger making sure we balance our spiritual account. He seeks to do one thing; to love us. 

What you & I need to ask ourselves each day is one question: “Am I aware of this love?” Do I have a terrible habit of forgetting it? Am I so moved by Our Lord’s generosity to me time and time again, that I have made a life-decision to change? Am I going to be more generous to those who need my patience, my forgiveness, the benefit of my doubt? Am I going to stop being a score keeper with those whose serious faults have failed me, my loved ones, my Country? If you & I are discouraged by the level of dishonesty, abuse of power, greed, and coldheartedness that takes place in our lives and in the life our Society; it is because so many have given up on the power of God’s Love and where it will take them. The only way this spiritual condition will be reversed is when People of Faith courageously choose to act and behave with generosity, with trust, with humility and above all with forgiveness. That won’t happen until we own our own poverty. Nothing else will work. Will we a Society and persons who will reverse these poisons because we are people who are “Moved with compassion” or will our response to people’s faults always be “Pay back what you owe me.”? 

Your brother in Christ

Original source can be found here.