Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 09/17/23 Tough Love: As We Forgive

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

Homily from the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Forgiveness is a decision. One of the most difficult commands that Jesus has called us to is that we must forgive those who have hurt us and who have hurt those we love. Loving like this is difficult. It is truly tough love that is willing to weigh up the hurt and release the offender from the debt that they owe. Mass Readings from September 17, 2023: Sirach 27:30—28:7 Psalms 103:1-4, 9-12Romans 14:7-9 Matthew 18:21-35

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

You're reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Chapter 18 verses 21 through 35. Peter approached Jesus and asked him, Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus answered, I say to you not seven times, but 77 times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold along with his wife, his children, and all his property and payment of the debt. At that, his servant fell down, did him homage and said, Be patient with me and I will pay you back in full. Moved with compassion, the master of that servant, let him go and forgave him alone. When that servant had left, he found another one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, pay back what you owe.

Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, Be patient with me and I will pay you back. But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow put into prison until he paid back the debt. Now, when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant,

I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you, Then, in anger, his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my Heavenly Father do to you unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart, the gospel of the Lord? I'd invite you to have a seat. So I don't know if how many of you know about what happened in 1994, April of 1994 in the country of Rwanda. Some of you might know it's so in Rwanda, there are two. tribes, essentially the Hutus and the Tootsies. And that's kind of a, even a, it's a colonial

formulation. In fact, in Rwanda, they were all one tribe. They were all one people. And then when the colonists showed up, they just kind of arbitrarily made these two tribes, the Hutus and the Tootisies. And ever since then, they were at odds with each other. But in an early April morning in 1994, the Hutu president, the tribe that was in charge, his plane crashed and he died. And he died. Within 10 minutes, the country was in chaos. And the Hutu's began going throughout the entire country and began slaughtering the Tutsis. They began slaughtering their neighbors, their friends, their schoolmates. There was one young woman, she was a college student at the time. She was just going to college, just like everyone here.

And she was home on Easter break. She didn't want to go on Easter break. She didn't want to go back to her hometown, but her dad begged her to, and so she showed up. And that morning, she had a mom and a dad. She had three brothers. One brother was away out of the country. But one of her brothers woke her up and told her what happened. And her dad just to save her life, her name is Immaculiae-Illabigiza. So to save her life, he told Emaculay, he said, go down the street to one of our neighbors. He's a Protestant pastor, he's a

Hutu, and beg him to take you into his house. And so she didn't want to go, but her father made her go. She went to this Protestant pastor's house, and she said, my dad told me to come, he took her in. And he put her into a three-foot-by-four-foot bathroom. And she says, she remembers walking into this bathroom, saying, I don't know how long I'm going to be stuck here, But this is way too small for any one person. Well, she spoke too soon because within a few moments,

the pastor brought in five more women. And by the end of the day, there were another two. So there were eight women stuck in this three-foot-by-four-foot bathroom. And the pastor, he didn't even tell his family because he knew that if his family knew that they were harboring eight women who were Tutsis, that they would be killed and because they would be tortured, they'd be broken. And so we didn't even tell his family.

In fact, as the days went on, he made it. He told the women, he said, only flush the toilet in here when you hear if someone used the other toilet. All eight women, they were in this room for 91 days. Only one person could sit down at a time and they sit down on the toilet and the other seven would have to stand. They just took turns being the one person to sit down and the other seven to stand. Meanwhile, right away when this happened, they got into this room

and there were some men who had seen emaculate and seen these other women go into this house. And so they surrounded it. And this one man, this one man that Maccala knew, she knew him since she was a child. He was her neighbor. He was a Hutu, and he kept calling out her name outside this house, saying, Immaculay, I've killed 399 cockroaches. You're going to be the 400th. This is a friend of hers. Someone had been over to her house for dinner. The men came into the Protestant pastor's house, and they searched, they demanded to be able to search it. They went everywhere. They searched every room. They searched the attic. They crawled into the ceiling. They even searched suitcases

because they thought he might be hiding babies. Later on, Imaculay heard on the radio, the Hutu is saying that you kill the babies, kill the children because the child of a snake is still a snake. A child of a cockroach is still a cockroach. And as she was waiting there and knowing these men are going to, they're about to find her. It's a small house, four bedroom, two bathrooms. One of those bathrooms is being occupied as they're getting closer to this bathroom. Macaulay, she said she wanted to like fling open the door and just like turn herself

and she just wanted to give up. She just wanted to quit. But another voice in her said, no, God, please help me. And she started to pray. In fact, her prayer was this. It's so fascinating. describes this. She said, my prayer was, I know I'm going to die. Like, I'm no special, I'm no more special than anyone outside of these walls. And they're all being killed right now.

God, I'm not asking you to save my life. I'm just asking you, let me live one more day. And if you let me live one more day, I will know that you're real. I know they're going to catch me, I know they're going to kill me. But if you let me live one more day, I will know that you're real and I'll know that you love me. One of these men as he was walking towards the bathroom to open it up and find these eight women who are stuck or hiding there. He stretched out his hand and he put his hand on the doorknob and then he stopped. And he turned to the pastor and he said, you know what? We trust you.

You're all good. And he turns around and he walked out. Immaculate said, I know this now. I know this is true. I know that God exists. I know that he's real. I know that he loves me. And so she asks one of the times when the pastor came in, she asked him for a

Bible. And so she just started reading this Bible because she's like, I need to know this God, who's real. I need to know this God who loves me. She said, but the problem was every time she opened up the Bible, she said it seemed like every single time she flipped open the pages, she read something like, love your enemies. Every time she flipped the page and it was like, pray for those who persecute you. Philip the page. And actually she came upon today's gospel. That you were to forgive seven times 70 times. And so she didn't know if she could do it. In fact, At one point, she had a dream while she's in this bathroom, and in the dream she sees Jesus, and Jesus speaks to her,

and Jesus says this, he says, immaculate, my child, when you come out of this house, you will find that everyone in your family has been killed. She describes that 91 days later when she came out of that house, that was the truth. Her mom and her dad, her two brothers who are still in country, her grandma and her grandpa, all of her neighbors, every one of her schoolmates,

and not killed by someone. long-range missile, or not killed by some like, you know, rifle. They were killed by machete and by shovel. That neighbors just went next door to the people that they knew, people that they lived with, and would take like a hoe or a rake. Ultimately, in the span of three months, one million people were killed by hand. Brother against brother, sister against sister, neighbor against neighbor. Meanwhile, in those 91 days, Immaculate, she prayed.

all the time. She said she prayed the rosary. If she was awake, she was praying the rosary. If she was awake, she was just going on the beads. But she said, whenever she got to the Our Father, and you got to that line in the Our Father that says, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, she said, she said, I didn't want to lie. She actually said, God knows that I don't want that to be the case. He knows, I'm not going to lie to God. So I just skipped that line. She prayed the rosary constantly. But when she came to that line, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Skipped it.

This is too hard. You know, in his book, mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, he says this. He says that in a previous talk, he says in a previous talk, I said that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. So if that was your answer before Mass, then you and C.S. Lewis are neck and neck. But then he goes on to say, but I'm not sure that I was right. I believe there's an even more unpopular virtue. and that is the terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.

Lewis says, he says, everyone says that forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive. And then to say that you have to forgive is to be met with yells and howls of injustice. Actually, he says, we don't not forgive because we think it's too high, too noble a thing. We don't forgive because we think forgiveness when someone has really hurt us is hateful,

that it's detestable, that it's a testable, that it's impossible. And people say to him, and this is what he wrote down, he said, people would say to me, this is right after World War II, said, I wonder how you'd feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a pole or a Jew. And Lewis says, so do I.

I wonder very much. Or if you were immaculate, and you knew the man who hacked your brother to death. If you were immaculate, and you knew the person who beat your mother to death, I wonder what you'd do then. I wonder if you'd still. love then because that kind of love, that thing we're commanded to do, that is not easy. That is

that's difficult. That, that's tough love. You know, last week we started the series called tough love. And that's when we're going to be talking about this for the next couple weeks. And we started talking about this. Yes, last week saying that, you know, sometimes tough love is telling people the hard thing they need to hear. Sometimes tough love is saying the difficult thing. Sometimes we said tough love is giving someone what they need rather than the lesser thing they want. And sometimes tough love is allowing someone to experience the consequences of their actions, right? Sometimes that's what tough love is, allowing someone to experience the consequences of their choices. And that's not easy.

We realize right now, we realize if that's what love is, love is not for the faint of heart. Because we know this. Like true love is tough. Love always costs something. It's something we have to establish because we have to remember this. The definition of love is, love is willing the good of the other. and if love is willing to go to the other, that means love always involves sacrifice. Love always involves sacrifice from the very beginning to the very end.

That if I'm going to choose to love, it's going to cost me something. Again, from the very beginning. If you go back to the book of Genesis, right, the very first story, we know how the story begins. God makes us, and he makes us in his image and likeness. Now here's a crazy thing. God, his deepest identity is love. So if God makes us in his image and likeness, what's our deepest identity? If God's deepest identity is love and you're made in his image,

that means your deepest identity is love. So it should be easy, right? It should be the easiest thing in the world. And yet the very first test we have of whether or not we'll love God, we totally crashed and burned. What happens? Here's the woman, here's the man, here's Adam and Eve. They're in the garden, and it says the serpent comes into the garden.

Now, we hear that, we think garter snake, probably, right? If you hear the term serpent comes into the garden, a little slurry little snake. But the actual Hebrew word for snake or serpent is the Hebrew word nahash, which doesn't mean garter snake, it means sea monster or means Leviathan. It's a word that means dragon. And here the dragon comes into the garden, and he challenges the woman. And rather than her standing up and saying, okay, I'll lay down my life for love,

rather than the man stepping forward and saying, I'll lay down my life for love, what do they do? They capitulate. They don't even put up a fight. So when God shows up, he curses the serpent, but then he has two consequences for the man and the woman, Sometimes we think that what God says to the woman or to the man are curses. They're not curses. They're merely consequences.

He curses the snake. That's really clear. But God says to the woman, he says, okay, from now on you'll have pain in childbirth. To the man, he says, okay, from now on, you'll work by the sweat of your brow and your work and made thorns and thistles. And again, that sounds like a curse. It's not a curse. It's a consequence.

And that consequence is actually a remedy. What was the problem? The problem was they failed to love. And so the consequence, the remedy is, you woman and you man are going to have to learn how to love. You're going to have to learn that love always costs something. You're going to have to learn that love always involves a sacrifice. So here's this pain in childbirth. Here what's going to happen?

Moms, you are going to bring a life into this world and you're going to love that being more than you ever loved anything in your entire life. There's going to be this new person and you're going to love them more than you ever imagined it was possible. And you know what's going to happen? It's going to hurt. And not just the act of childbirth, it's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you your maidenhood. It's going to cost you your life.

It's going to cost you your body. You'll never be the same after you get birth to this child or to these children. And in that, you're going to learn love always costs something. And to the man, he says, okay, you're just going to happen. The rest of your life, you're going to get up every morning and you're going to get into your crappy car and do your crappy commute, get to your crappy office, get a crappy job and your crappy cubicle. and you're going to have to learn that if you're going to provide for your family, it's going to cost you something. Because this is the consequence.

You will learn how to love, but when you learn how to love, we'll learn that it always costs something. Now, I remember sharing this with some students before, and at one point this young woman said, like, Father, I don't think you're right. Like, I love, and I don't think it's a sacrifice at all. If it's a sacrifice, I should be happy to make the sacrifice. And I was like, good. That's great. If you're, if that's you, that's wonderful. But you have to realize it still costs something.

Like if you spend time with one person, you can't spend time with others. Like if you're giving someone your attention, that means you're not giving someone else your attention. Granted out loud, if you spend time with someone else, that means you don't have your alone time. What the heck? That costs something, especially for introverts like me. Like you realize every time you spend time with one person, you're always sacrificing the time you can spend with someone else. Even if you love them, that's what marriage is. When people stand up here, like yesterday, we had a wedding here yesterday, stand up on top of the

here and they say, I choose you. What they're saying is I sacrifice everyone else as a potential romantic person. And yeah, you should be happy to do that. Spoiler, you should be happy to do that. But we can't pretend there's no price to pay. Like we can't pretend that there's not a cost with that. If we pretend, we'll be taken by surprise when it actually costs us something. will be taken by surprise, especially when love gets tough. And we'll be taken by surprise when love commands us to forgive. And that's what we're commanded to do in the gospel today. Today's gospel commands us to do tough love.

We heard the parable a thousand times, right? Here's the king. He's his set of length. He owes him a huge amount. He's going to throw him in jail, but the guy just begs him, forgive my debt. He releases this from his debt. He goes on. another person owes a much smaller amount.

He begs for forgiveness, doesn't give it to him. And then the whole crux of the parable is in that last line, where Jesus says, so will my Heavenly Father do to you unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart. We have to forgive. That's why Immaculate skipped that line in the Our Father. When she was praying the Rosary,

that's why she skipped it, because what do we pray in the Our Father? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Basically, we're begging the Father. God, only forgive me, as fully as I forgive the person who hurt me the most. Realize that's what we're praying. Every time we pray the Lord's prayer. We're actually telling God, God, don't forgive me

if I won't forgive the people who hurt me the most. That's what we're saying. Jesus says, so my Heavenly Father due to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart. So here's the question, what's forgiveness? Like this thing we're commanded to do, what is it? Because I think sometimes we think like, well, forgiveness is just kind of rolling over.

forgiveness is just taking it on the chin. Forgiveness is just being a doormat. Forgiveness is acting like, well, it's a fine. I don't matter really much. I'm pretty much dirt. I'm scum. I shouldn't defend myself. That's not what forgiveness is.

Let's make it really, really clear. That's not forgiveness. We have to establish what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not pretending. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not excusing. Forgiveness is not trusting and forgiveness is not a feeling. Let's go back over this.

So forgiveness is not pretending. Forgiveness is not pretending that, oh, that's no big deal. That's not forgiveness. Forgiveness is not pretending that you're not hurt. Sometimes we think that I can't forgive until I'm no longer hurt. That's not forgiveness. Forgiveness is also not forgetting. That's being dumb.

Forgiveness is not excusing. Like, oh, no, no, no, don't worry about it. There's nothing to forgive. That's not forgiveness. Forgiveness is not trusting. If someone's hurt you to trust them without them proving that they're trustworthy, that's foolish. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. until the person has earned reconciliation.

And we also know that forgiveness is not a feeling, just like love. Love is more than a feeling, right? Love is a decision, and forgiveness is a decision. So that's what forgiveness is not. Here's what is forgiveness. We have to understand this. Forgiveness is rooted in justice. I can't actually have forgiveness until I know justice.

So what's justice? Justice is simply, really simple. Justice is giving someone their due. Another way to say it is, justice is giving someone what they're owed. giving someone what they deserve. So like, if you hurt me, whatever it is you cost me, whatever it is that you took from me, that's what you owe me. That's justice. That's just being fair. Another way to say it, if you lend me your car and I take your car and I damage your car,

and it cost you $900 to fix your car, justice means I owe you $900. That's simply giving someone what they're owed. It's giving someone what they're due. You know, it's funny, actually, I've been saying tough love is allowing someone to experience the consequences of their choices? I don't think that's tough love, actually. I've been thinking about a lot more recently. I think allowing someone to experience the consequences of their choices isn't tough love. That's simply justice. I think maybe tough love is the next step. I think tough love might be allowing voluntarily choosing to accept the consequences of someone else's choices. I think the tough love Jesus is describing today

is voluntarily bearing the consequences of someone else's decisions. So we say it like this. In justice, you owe me X. Forgiveness is just this. Forgiveness is simply this. Saying you owe me X, I'm not going to make you pay me back. That's all it is. It's not emotional.

it's not a feeling. It's the decision that we heard in the gospel today. I release you from your debt. I'm not going to try to make you pay me back. Now, the big question is how we do that. I'm making it sound really easy up here. It's hard, but it starts with the first step. The first step is actually we have to add up the debt.

Truly, honestly, if we're going to actually be people of forgiveness, we have to know what they cost, what forgiveness costs. So if someone's hurt you, what did they cost you? The gospel, it says this. The new American Bible, the translation says he brought in someone who owed him a huge amount. That is just, that's, that's this translation.

The actual Greek doesn't say huge amount. The actual Greek gives the exact number. It brought in a man who owed him 10,000 talents. Because the king sat down, he added it up. He knew exactly what this guy cost him. And because he knew exactly what it cost him, he was able to say, now I release you from your debt. I'm not going to make you pay me back 10,000 talents.

This is what we need to do. That if we're going to actually beat people of forgiveness, my invitation is this. My invitation is every one of us. If someone's hurt us, we have to go into a place of prayer. Like go into a place before the Blessed Sacrament, before the Eucharist, a place where you are not going to give into anger or wrath,

but a place where you can just call to mind. What has this person done? What have they cost me? Your choices have cost me my innocence. What you did to me, has made it really difficult for me to trust anyone. Because you left, I always feel like I'm gonna be abandoned. Because you said that, I hear your voice constantly.

Every time I'm gonna take a step forward, I hear your voice knocking me back down. This is what you cost me. That's important to do this, because not to be in anger, but to just know, what did this person cost you? And then to simply make the decision that's made in the gospel.

This is what you cost me. I release you from your debt. I'm not going to make you pay me back. Now, we have to realize that forgiveness is not an event, meaning here's what happens. Here's what happens to everyone. We're like, okay, I forgive them. And then we see them again.

We're like, oh, I forgive them. And then someone says something nice about them or something good about them. We're like, well, if you only knew what I knew. Like that. So forgiveness is not an event. Forgiveness is a process. And it's a process that always involves sacrifice. But here's the thing.

It's a process you can do. and you can do it for one reason because this is how you have been loved. You actually can love like this. You can do this tough love for one reason. That's because you have been loved exactly like this from the very beginning to the very end. I mean, think about, go back to Genesis chapter three.

Yes, there's the consequences of their sins. And yes, Adam and Eve are leaving the Garden of Eden. But there's this line when Adam and Eve leave the garden, it reveals that God follows them. And not only that, it says this. It says, then the Lord God made leather garments and clothed the man and the woman with them. And that tells us two things.

It tells us that even after they fell, even after they were banished, even after they struggled, God still took care of them, that God didn't abandon them, that he loved them in the midst of their brokenness, that he cared for them. But it also tells us the second thing.

He says, the Lord God made leather garments. Question, where do leather garments come from? they come from an animal that has been killed so here's God who's going to care he's going to love them he's going to provide for them and when God loves them it's going to cost something because from this moment on love always involves sacrifice and this is how God loves you

God loves us with this tough love God loves us to the love that involves sacrifice how deep is this love this crazy let's go back to the 10,000 talent thing we're coming to the end you guys we're almost there The 10,000 talent thing is just remarkable. The reason why the New American Bible says a huge amount is because if it said he owed him 10,000 talents, we'd be like, okay. Because we don't know what 10,000 talents are. Here's what 10,000 talents is. One talent is equal to 6,000 days wages.

So one talent equals 6,000 days wages. If this guy owns 10,000 talents, that means he owes the king 6,000. million days wages. He owes the king on 160,000 years of service. And he's like, give me time, I'll pay you back. No, bro, you are not going to pay him back. This is the depth of the king's, this depth of the father's love, 160,000 years of service versus the 100 denari.

Sorry, the small amount, the other guy owed him. There's actually a number here in Greek is 100 denari. 100 days wages. I read a commentary that said, you can carry 100 days wages in your pocket. But if you're going to carry 10,000 talents, it would take 8,600 people carrying 60 pounds of talents each spread out one yard apart from each other.

It would stretch five miles. The depth of God's love for you. This is how you and I have been loved. The God loves us and it cost him. This is the tough love of God. What's to say in John chapter 3? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. What did it come?

cost God to love you. It cost him everything. What are you worth to God? You are worth his everything. I mean, I don't think we can even imagine this. How much it cost God to love us. What made it possible for us to go to confession? And here are those words, I absolve you of all of your sins. Every time we go to confession, it costs nothing less than God's very life. this is how much you have been loved. This is how much you are loved. And this is the last thing. Immaculate in that bathroom.

She said for days and weeks, she skipped over, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those trespass against us until she was reading the Bible. She read a story that you and I all know. It's the story of the end of Jesus' life as he's on the cross among Jesus' last words. Where Jesus is crucified and he cries out to his father.

Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. She said when I read those words, something in my heart broke. And she knew that if Jesus could forgive those who are killing him, then I can forgive those who killed my family. If he loved them, his murderers with this kind of love, and he loved me with this kind of love, then I can love my family's murderers with this kind of love. And she did. And she has. Because she knew, immaculate knew, that she had been loved with a love that was willing to sacrifice everything. And the truth of the matter is, you and I, here in this church tonight, we have been loved by a love that is willing to sacrifice everything.

It is not a soft love. It is a tough love that's rooted in justice. But where God looks at you and says, I release you from your debt, I'm not going to make you pay me back. and that costs something and that's a sacrifice but that's also what makes it possible for us to say those who have hurt us

to add up what they owe us to add up what they've cost us and to say with God's grace in the name of Jesus I'm not going to make you pay me back in the name of Jesus I release you from your debt

It.