September 15 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Mt 18/21-35

Background

The Gospel today continues instruction for the conflict-ridden members of the early Catholic community. Today it recalls an incident recounted in the tradition (which may have had many more Jesus/Peter stories than are available to us today) in which Peter again plays the straight man for Jesus. The Lord has told them that God is forgiving Love – the essence of the revelation of Jesus and of the Christian message. So if God is forgiving love we must forgive too, right? All right says Peter, setting Jesus up, how many times? Seven? Poor Peter lost again. Just as there are no limits to God’s forgiveness, so there must be no limits to our forgiveness. One has to say that this theme has not always been honored in the Christian community.

Story

A brother and sister fought all the time, from the first moment the little girl discovered that her monopoly on her parents had been broken by the arrival on the new little monster. She picked on him and found fault with everything he did from day one. As soon as he learned that there was a rival in the family who did not like him, he began fighting back. They heckled one another, made fun of one another, tattled on one another, criticized one another, ridiculed one another. Nothing their parents could do would stop the fighting. When they were teens they bickered all the time, made fun of each other’s friends, and reported one another to their parents. One day the girl made so much fun at a party of her brother’s date, that the brother said to her, "I wish you were dead." The girl was in an auto accident on the way home and was killed. The boy never got over it. All his life he mourned for his sister and blamed himself for her death. Why couldn’t we stop fighting he often said. Maybe in purgatory they’ll finally make up.

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