St. Paul Church recently issued the following announcement.

Date: September 13, 2020

Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. — Sirach 28:2

FORGIVENESS

Nearly ten years before, a son and father had parted ways when the business they shared went bankrupt. The son blamed the father. They did not speak to each other again.

Then the father became seriously ill. The mother called the son and told him he had better come soon. The son walked sheepishly into the hospital room. The father motioned his son to him and whispered: “Did you ever think you could do anything that would keep me from loving you?”

Resentment and anger are foul things, the first reading from Sirach tells us. Remember the last things. Stop hating. Live by the commandments. As Saint Paul writes to the Romans, we are to live for the Lord and die for the Lord.

Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel reminds us of God’s compassion. The immense sin of humanity has been forgiven and stricken from the record. We are to forgive others in the same way.

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION

We’ve seen how the rescue of Eucharistic Prayer II from the mists of history changed the style of our prayer, introducing a sleek simplicity to the prayer said aloud by the priest. Remember, before the reform of our prayer in the late 1960s, the priest whispered the words of the Roman Canon, Eucharistic Prayer I. His voice was not amplified, his back was to the people, who could only tell what was going on by a shift in his posture as he bowed and genuflected and as bells were rung to indicate his progress through the prayer.

With the emergence of the new prayers, some feared that the old prayer would be lost forever if it weren’t somehow changed. The reformers asked that it be streamlined a bit by omitting the repeated “Through Christ” at the end of various intercessions, and trimming the list of somewhat obscure saints. The new edition therefore brackets parts of the two lists of saints in the prayer, unfortunately dropping all the women from the second set. The decision was also made to keep the Lord’s words at the consecration exactly the same in every Eucharistic Prayer, although there is precedent for more variety. On November 2, 1968, Pope Paul VI signed off on the plan of the new Mass, and by April 1969, the publication of the revised order of Mass was announced.

FORGIVE OTHERS

There are many kinds of alms the giving of which helps us to obtain pardon for our sins; but none is greater than that by which we forgive from our heart a sin that someone has committed against us.

—St. Augustine

AUTUMN

Besides the autumn poets sing, a few prosaic days, a little this side of the snow, and that side of the haze.

—Emily Dickinson

Original source can be found here.