Homily for Thursday, 14 August 2014– Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe

Thursday of the 19th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 12:1-12; Psalm 78:56-57, 58-59, 61-62; Matthew 18:21-19:1
 

Who here has ever owed anyone anything; has been owed something by someone else; has borrowed from someone or had someone borrow from us? How many of us has ever owed or been owed a debt that was simply too large to repay?

We hear Peter ask Jesus, “If [somebody] sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” And we hear Jesus answer Peter, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times,” and then go on to tell the parable of the unmerciful servant.

The truth is that we all owe a debt to God that is too large to repay. Only because God is merciful, whether we have sinned once, seven times, seventy-seven times, or even more often, do we have any chance at salvation. We have been redeemed and have a chance at salvation only because of God’s gratuitous mercy toward us shown us in Christ’s death for us on the cross. By this mercy of our God, our debt; our sin, no matter how bad or how many times, is forgiven. We would never be able to repay our debt to God; we would never be able to be saved otherwise.

And so, in light of God’s gratuitous mercy toward us, can we think of someone who owes us a comparatively smaller debt; someone who has sinned against us, even repeatedly; someone we are being invited to forgive today? Perhaps we could think of and forgive this person while we pray the Our Father as we will in a few moments: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Is it not good to have a clear sense of right and wrong? This is itself a gift from God, but can it not, if we are not careful, lead to a kind of obsession with the wrongs of others and what others ought to do to repay the debt, so to speak, of having wronged us? Jesus invites us to model his own gratuitous and unlimited mercy toward us, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times”; the kind of mercy that accepts the cross as Christ did for our sins; and yet the kind of mercy that ultimately brings us freedom.

Jesus models for us this kind of mercy that paid our debt of sin on the cross even though Jesus was without sin. We have in St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast we celebrate today, an example of the same kind of mercy; a mercy that accepted death at Auschwitz in place of a young father who was chosen randomly to be killed because other prisoners had escaped. St. Maximilian Kolbe, who had done no wrong, took upon himself a debt that the man he saved could not repay: “I am a Catholic priest. I will take his place.”

What courage and what witness to Christ; to our God who gave his son to die for us; who pays our debt of sin that we cannot repay, and who invites us to the same kind of mercy toward one another!