Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of James Geelan (+); may he rest in peace and rise in glory. The only other special Mass intention in the last few days was that for the Holy Souls on Thursday.
I delight in the Judaism of the first century, the Judaism which the early Church lived, and which these Jewish Christians welcomed us, the non-Jewish (Gentile) Christians, into. Although, of course, in a modified way, as summarised in chapter 15 of the Acts of the Apostles. Judaism was wonderfully diverse in those last years and decades before the Temple in Jerusalem was finally destroyed. This diversity vanished with the Temple, for the now scattered Jewish communities went into survival mode and the rabbis quickly reconfigured the old religion to continue as a synagogue-only religion, and establishing an early authorised version of Scripture (the Church ignored this move and continued to use the old Septuagint version of Scripture). That's a terrible simplification, so do look for a more complete description of the reconfiguration of Judaism at that time. You may begin here, perhaps.
Even without going into that detail, we still get a bright picture of the life and culture of the Jewish people before the Wars of the late 60s, from the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament took this Jewish culture for granted, so it's always nice to learn more about what was lost. It bears repeating that Christ had not quite intended to create a new religion, Christianity, but was bringing the old religion to fulfilment. The Church still remembers this when she calls herself an heir to the original Israelite People of God at the foot of Mount Sinai:
"The word 'Church' (Latin ecclesia, from the Greek ek-ka-lein, to "call out of") means a convocation or an assembly. It designates the assemblies of the people, usually for a religious purpose. Ekklesia is used frequently in the Greek Old Testament for the assembly of the Chosen People before God, above all for their assembly on Mount Sinai where Israel received the Law and was established by God as his holy people. By calling itself 'Church,' the first community of Christian believers recognised itself as heir to that assembly. In the Church, God is 'calling together' his people from all the ends of the earth." - Catechism of the Catholic Church, #751
That's why we retain for full use (alongside our New Testament documents) the Old Testament, which in the Catholic translations is more-or-less the old Septuagint used by the Jews in Apostolic times. And that is also why it's so nice to have these matched readings at Mass, these carefully arranged sets of first readings and gospel readings. We discover that, in a very real way, many basic elements of the Catholic religion already existed in expectation in the Hebrew Scriptures and can be drawn out and stand alongside their appearances in the Gospels. So, this Sunday, we come to the schoolbook Jewish command to forgive endlessly, as God forgives. This is enshrined for us in the Lord's prayer, the Our Father. But we see it today in the first reading also, from the book of Ecclesiasticus:
"Plot ill, and the ill shall recoil on thyself, springing up beyond all thy expectation. For the proud, mockery and shame! Vengeance, like a lion, couches in wait for them. For all who triumph at the ill fortune of the just, a snare to catch them, and a long remorse before death takes them! Rancour and rage are detestable things both; and the sinner has both in store. He that will be avenged brings on himself the Lord’s vengeance; watch and ward shall be kept over his sins continually. Forgive thy neighbour his fault, and for thy own sins thy prayer shall win pardon; should man bear man a grudge, and yet look to the Lord for healing? Should he refuse mercy to his fellow-man, yet ask forgiveness, should he think to appease God, while he, a mortal man, is obdurate? Who shall plead for his acquittal? Look to thy last end, and leave thy quarrelling;" Ecclesiasticus, 27:30 - 28:6
And then Christ, standing knee deep in the Jewish tradition, tells Saint Peter in the Gospel to forgive seventy-seven times, and then fleshes it out with one of his rabbinical parables. If pushed, He would have said seven hundred and seventy-seven times, but I think Peter got the message.
"...the servant fell at his feet and said, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay thee in full.' And his master, moved with pity for him, let the servant go and discharged him of his debt. So the servant went out, and met with a fellow servant of his, who owed him a hundred pieces of silver; whereupon he caught hold of him and took him by the throat, and said, 'Pay me all thou owest me.' His fellow servant went down on his knees in entreaty; 'Have patience with me,' he said, 'and I will pay thee in full.' But the other refused; he went away and committed him to prison for such time as the debt was unpaid. The rest of the servants were full of indignation when they saw this done, and went in to tell their master what had happened. And so he was summoned by his master, who said to him, 'I remitted all that debt of thine, thou wicked servant, at thy entreaty; was it not thy duty to have mercy on thy fellow servant, as I had mercy on thee?' And his master, in anger, gave him over to be tortured until the debt was paid. It is thus that My heavenly Father will deal with you, if brother does not forgive brother with all his heart." - Gospel of S. Matthew, 18: 26-35
So then, we must forgive endlessly. This is one of the great gifts of the Judaeo-Christian moral system that we have inherited. It is one of the features of the perfection that Christ calls us to, when he says that we must be perfect as God our Father is perfect. And that's all to the command; we could go into all manner of subtlety about the degree of wrong done, and the consequences of crimes committed against us and how intolerable it is for society to allow for crime to go unpunished. But the command is personal and it is, oh, so simple, if you think about it. It may not be easy to forget a wrong done, because memory remains, but if we have forgiven it and truly forgiven it, we find a peace that nobody can take from us. We must always remember the Man on the Cross, looking upon his persecutors and saying, 'Forgive them, for they do not know what they do.'
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