Living the Kairos of Mercy, 24th Sunday (C), September 11, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
September 11, 2022
Ex 32:7-11.13-14, Ps 51, 1 Tim 1:12-17, Lk 15:1-32

To listen to the homily for today’s Mass, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Late in his pontificate, St. John Paul II was asked what was the greatest problem facing the world. He didn’t say the threat of nuclear mutually-assured destruction, global warming, endemic poverty, terrorism, scandals in the Church, or the impact of particular sins that continuously cry out to heaven — even though he took all of those problems seriously. How would you respond to the question? St. John Paul II said, to the surprise of almost everyone, that the greatest problem was “unexpiated guilt.” He recognized that after two World Wars and the Cold War, the Holocaust, the genocides in Armenia, the Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, after so many atrocities from tyrannical governments, after the waterfalls of blood flowing from more than two billion abortions worldwide, after the sins that have destroyed so many families, after so much physical and sexual abuse, after lengthy crime logs in newspapers every day, after the scourge of terrorism like the terrible events of 9/11 we prayerfully remember today, after so much hurt and pain, the terrible weight of collective guilt crushes not only individuals but burdens structures and whole societies. The modern world is like one big Lady Macbeth, compulsively washing our hands to remove the blood from them, but there is no earthly detergent powerful enough to take the blemishes away. We can converse with psychiatrists and psychologists, but their words and prescriptions can only help us deal with our guilt, not eliminate it. We can confess our sins to bartenders, but they can only dispense Absolut vodka, not absolution, and inebriation never brings expiation. We can escape reality through distractions and addictions — drugs, sports, entertainment, materialism, food, power, lust, and others — but none can adequately anaesthetize the pain in our soul from the suffering we’ve caused, endured or witnessed. Whether we admit it, whether we realize it, we’re longing for redemption. We’re yearning for a second, third or seventy-times-seventh chance. We’re pining for forgiveness, reconciliation, and a restoration of goodness. We’re hankering for a giant reset button for ourselves and for the world. And if we can’t have that personal and collective do over, then at least we ache for liberation from the past and, like the diminutive tax-collector Zacchaeus in the Gospel or Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, for a chance make up for has been done. We want, need and pant for atonement. And in response to that urgent and ever new need, God responds with his mercy. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds. And so St. John Paul II emphasized, and Pope Francis has continued to emphasize, that we are now living in a “kairos of mercy,” from the Greek word that means “favorable time or occasion” for God’s forgiving love.
• Today’s readings put that consoling truth in big bold letters.

• In his First Letter to Timothy, St. Paul tells us very clearly Jesus’ purpose in entering the world: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” That explains why he took on our human nature, why he suffered, died, and rose. In the Alleluia verse, St. Paul builds on this truth, telling us, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” Jesus, after having come to save us, wants to send us out with his message and mission of reconciliation, trying to bring as many as we possibly can to Jesus so that he may save them from sin and its consequence, eternal death. And in the Gospel, with the three moving parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Sons, Jesus drives home the point about just how important forgiving us is to God.
• In the Parable of the Lost Sheep, we see how God loves us individually. Jesus the Good Shepherd know and calls each one of us by name; none of us is merely a number or “one more” to him. It might seem strange that a shepherd would leave 99 sheep and go out in search of one lost stray, because most of us don’t have that type of love for animals in general, especially if we have 100 of them or more. But Jesus was saying, “If you had ten young kids, and one of the didn’t come home, wouldn’t you leave the other nine to go out in search of your child?” Jesus loves each of us more than the greatest earthly moms and dads loves each of their children. He will come to find us. And he will rejoice when he finds us and leads us home.
• The Parable of the Lost Coin, at first glance, makes even less sense than that of the lost sheep. What woman who lost a quarter would spend all types of time sweeping the house looking for it, and then throw a big party upon finding it? But we need to know what the coin was. When a woman was married, she had a wedding veil, normally with ten precious coins strung like a crown that constituted her dowry. Not only were the coins precious but their symbolic value was priceless. The present-day analogy would be if a woman had lost her wedding ring. She indeed would pick up the sofa cushions, look under the couch, sweep everywhere frantically looking for it, and, if she found it, would certainly rejoice.
• Both parables led to a similar application by Jesus: “In just the same way,” he said, “there will be more joy in heaven,” or “among the angels of God,” “over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” God rejoices more in reconciling one of his sons or daughters than a shepherd rejoices finding his sheep, a woman rejoices finding her precious wedding coin, or a mom or dad rejoices finding a lost infant in the mall. In fact, Jesus says the joy is “more” over one sinner’s return than heaven rejoices over the fidelity of 99 holy ones. No wonder why Pope Francis loves to say, “God’s greatest joy is forgiving!” And God wants us to experience that joy by coming to receive that reconciliation.
• Those stories are the warm-up acts that introduce the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which, together with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, are without a doubt two of the most famous short stories of all time.
• What was the younger brother’s essential sin? It wasn’t blowing his inheritance on a dissolute life. It was to treat his Father as if he were dead. To ask for the inheritance while his Father was still living was tantamount to saying, “You’re dead to me, Old Man. I don’t want to wait until you croak. Give me now what you’re planning to give me when finally you breathe your last.” And the Father, doubtless more concerned over the direction of his son’s life than nursing any wounds at his son’s ingratitude and presumption, gave him the inheritance, probably figuring that it might be the last chance for the son to learn who the Father really was. The son went and wasted everything in an immoral life. Eventually when a famine hit the land where he was, he needed to do work that no Jew would ever have signed up for, to care for pigs (whom the Jews considered unclean animals). He was eventually so hungry that he longed for what the pigs were eating, something that indicated basically that he had become almost subhuman. But that’s when the grace of conversion first hit him. “Coming to his senses,” St. Luke writes, he realized that his Father’s hired hands were always well-fed and he decided to return to his Father’s house, to apologize for his sins, and asked to be treated like a hired hand. When we hear the expression today, “hired hand,” most of us imagine he was being asked to be treated as an “employee,” but it was nothing really of the sort. He was asking to be treated as “less than a slave.” The slaves were considered to some degree members of the household and they were taken care of and fed. The “hired hands” were not members of the family. They were totally responsible for their own upkeep, and that of their family, if they were lucky to find a job day-by-day. But the younger son recognized that the Father was kind and gave not just some rations but “more than enough food to eat,” even to those who had no right to nutrition and drink. The son was beginning to reawaken to the Father’s goodness. But he still didn’t understand the Father. He rehearsed his speech as he was returning home, that he had sinned against God and against his father and didn’t deserve to be treated as a son, thinking that the relationship of filiation would now have been “dead” since he had basically already pronounced his father’s obituary. But the Father, seeing him far off, was filled with merciful love and ran to his son. The son began with his well-practiced confession, but the Father interrupted him. He called for the finest garment to be put around him, to cover up all of the swine excrement that doubtless clung to his clothes. He put a signet ring on his finger, to show that he still had “power of attorney” over the Father’s goods. He had sandals placed on his feet to symbolize that he was free to go about as he pleased — slaves never had sandals. And he commanded that the fattened calf, normally reserved for weddings and the biggest celebrations, be killed for a feast. Whereas the son had asked to be treated like a hired hand lower than slaves, the Father restored him to his full dignity and threw a celebration like he had never had even before he had wandered. Regardless of whether the son and the guests could understand it, the Father had to express his joy because, as Jesus puts into his mouth, his son who was lost had been found, who was dead had been raised to new life. That’s the joy God experiences whenever any of his prodigal sons or daughters returns home.
• Our first response to these readings is to grasp what we prayed for at the beginning of Mass, that we, too, have “greatly sinned” by our “own most grievous fault,” we have wandered from the Father and his house by occasionally treating God and his commandments as dead to us, and we need to come to our senses and return home for reconciliation. In today’s second reading, after Saint Paul says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” he says, “of these I am the foremost.” He describes, “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and arrogant.” But God treated him with mercy, not only bringing him to conversion and reconciliation in Damascus, but then choosing him to become one of his greatest followers. God wants to show us the same mercy. These parables are meant to communicate to us what God seeks to do for each of us through the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. When we come to our senses, when we realize the Father not only is not dead but is good and cares for us and we begin to make the journey home, he runs out to meet us to restore us to who we really are. The Father initiates a massive celebration, having the special fattened calf slaughtered for the son’s return, because, we, too, were lost and have been found, and were dead branches on the vine who have been resuscitated. That’s what happens every good Confession. Every reconciliation is a resurrection, when we’re raised from the dead by the Father’s mercy (which is why, I believe, Jesus founded it on Easter Sunday evening). The Sacrament of Penance is God’s great lost-and-found department for his beloved children. As Pope Francis said at the beginning of his papacy, “God never tires of forgiving us, but it’s we who tire of asking for forgiveness.” Then he prayed, “May we never tire of asking for what God never tires to give!” And so to get concrete: When was the last time you made a good confession? When was the last time you gave God joy by coming to receive his mercy, by which he seeks to help you enter into that joy?
• But this Gospel isn’t just about us and our need for God’s mercy. It’s about others, their need for the same mercy, and our reaction when they come to receive it. The setting for the Gospel was because, as St. Luke tells us, “Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” The Pharisees were literally, in Hebrew, the “Separated Ones,” those who distanced themselves from sin and sinners. They were scandalized that Jesus would have any contact with sinners at all, not to mention welcome them, treat them with kindness and even share meals and communion with them. The older son is a figure like the Pharisees and Scribes. He was angry at the Father’s mercy toward his brother and passive-aggressively refused to enter the party the Father was throwing for his brother’s return. When the Father came out to plead with him to share his joy and enter the party, the older son’s reply showed that he had never really understood his Father either, treating him not as a loving Father but more as a slave owner. “Look,” he said, “all these years I servedyou and not once did I ever disobey your orders.” You can almost hear him call the father, “Master!” And it got worse. “Yet when this son of yours returns,” he quipped. He couldn’t even refer to his own flesh-and-blood as his brother. He enviously protested that he had never even been allowed to kill a young goat for a party with his friends and yet the other brother got a fattened calf. While the younger brother now at least understood the love of the Father and was rejoicing in it, the older brother was still in a sick, judgmental, bitter pigsty of his own. We don’t know whether the older brother eventually entered the party. It was still an open question for the scribes and the Pharisees who were listening to Jesus, whether they would share Jesus’ joy and come to welcome and eat with the same sinners, the same prodigal sons and daughters with whom Jesus was dining.
• There are still many today like that older brother, like the Scribes and Pharisees, who resent rather than rejoice when sinners return home. Many Christians today, for example, do not rejoice on Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Easter when people who do not regularly practice the faith come to back to Church, crowd parking lots and occupy the pews they normally occupy. Many do not rejoice to see the person who bullied them in school, local criminals, the person who destroyed their best friend’s marriage, or family members who gossiped about them come to Church converted. Today’s cancel culture is one of a total lack of forgiveness: if someone makes a mistake, or if someone just doesn’t like what someone else has done, they try to destroy the person without any possibility of forgiveness and rehabilitation.
• Instead of that approach, we need to be praying for others to receive God’s mercy, helping them to come to be reconciled to God, and rejoicing when they convert and receive divine mercy. In today’s first reading, Moses intercedes with God for mercy on behalf of the Israelites, who were arrogantly returning to the worship of money and nature in the golden calf. God tested Moses after the Israelites’ infidelity. Like he did with Noah earlier, God proposes to Moses to start the human race again from scratch with him, but he was doing so to train Moses in mercy. And Moses passed the test. Moses reminded God of how merciful he is, how he had been so good to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, how he had promised to make their descendants numerous, and how generous he had been to those descendants in rescuing them from Pharoah. It’s a sign of the passion with which we should be praying for God’s mercy for others. But we should also be inviting people to experience that mercy. Since heaven rejoices more over one repentant sinner, how great it is when we’re able to be God’s instrument to help people come to receive it. When was the last time you encouraged someone to come to receive God’s mercy? Since Jesus came into the world to reconcile sinners and since heaven rejoices most over every sinner who repents, there’s no greater way to make God happy — and to respond to the crisis of unexpiated guilt — than to come to receive his mercy and to bring others to receive it.
• Today at Mass, God has prepared for us not a fattened calf, but his Son, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He wants to cover us anew in our baptismal garment, restore us to our dignity as children and heirs, and send us forth with sandals, free, to glorify him by our life, through running out to greet others in his name with the same joy and mercy with which he never ceases to run to embrace us. Each of today has arisen and come to the house of Father. It’s here that he welcomes us and eats with us, as sinners reconciled by him. It’s here where he strengthens us to be ministers and missionaries of mercy to others so that we may fill him, and he us, with joy!

The following text guided the homily: 

But Moses implored the LORD, his God, saying,
“Why, O LORD, should your wrath blaze up against your own people,
whom you brought out of the land of Egypt
with such great power and with so strong a hand?
Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,
and how you swore to them by your own self, saying,
‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky;
and all this land that I promised,
I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage.'”
So the LORD relented in the punishment
he had threatened to inflict on his people.

“Or what woman having ten coins and losing one
would not light a lamp and sweep the house,
searching carefully until she finds it?
And when she does find it,
she calls together her friends and neighbors
and says to them,
‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’
In just the same way, I tell you,
there will be rejoicing among the angels of God
over one sinner who repents.”

Then he said,
“A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father,
‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’
So the father divided the property between them.
After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings
and set off to a distant country
where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
When he had freely spent everything,
a severe famine struck that country,
and he found himself in dire need.
So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens
who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed,
but nobody gave him any.
Coming to his senses he thought,
‘How many of my father’s hired workers
have more than enough food to eat,
but here am I, dying from hunger.
I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him,
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I no longer deserve to be called your son;
treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’
So he got up and went back to his father.
While he was still a long way off,
his father caught sight of him,
and was filled with compassion.
He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.
His son said to him,
‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
I no longer deserve to be called your son.’
But his father ordered his servants,
‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him;
put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.
Then let us celebrate with a feast,
because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;
he was lost, and has been found.’
Then the celebration began.
Now the older son had been out in the field
and, on his way back, as he neared the house,
he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.
The servant said to him,
‘Your brother has returned
and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf
because he has him back safe and sound.’
He became angry,
and when he refused to enter the house,
his father came out and pleaded with him.
He said to his father in reply,
‘Look, all these years I served you
and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns,
who swallowed up your property with prostitutes,
for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’
He said to him,
‘My son, you are here with me always;
everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice,
because your brother was dead and has come to life again;
he was lost and has been found.’”

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