Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2022-2023)

Introduction:

There is no greater manifestation of God's love and mercy than the forgiveness of sins.

G.K. Chesterton, an English writer and philosopher, was asked why he became a Catholic. He answered, 'To have my sins forgiven.'

This is the greatest grace the Church can offer to you and me: reconciliation, the restoration of friendship with the Lord, and the forgiveness of our sins.

This Penitential Act is to ask for that but also a reminder that we need to do the same - to forgive others.

Let's take a moment and think about whom I should forgive in order to receive God's mercy."

Homily:

Saying "I forgive you" sounds so easy.

How many times have you and I heard or said this: "Forgive me. I forgive you."

Some of us may deal with it every day.

Look, it is not that hard to break up over misunderstandings.

Anger is flaring up and going deeper.

And we justify ourselves.

Naturally, I think everyone wants to feel that they are fair, that it is not me.

It is him or her who is not fair.

So maybe we move forward, we forgive, but we do not forget.

And I do not know about you, but I still remember the painful moments when someone hurt me. Yes, I am willing to forgive, but my memory is not that easy to wipe away.

And you know, often it will be like that forgiveness is accepting to love someone despite their mistakes.

The problem starts when I start to say, "I'm in the right."

It is very, very dangerous. "I'm in the right" destroys the power to love.

It destroys the opportunity to reconcile.

It is an act of arrogant pride, a lie.

Why?

Because everybody is a sinner. If we are not sinners, we just shouldn't be here.

But we are!

Fr. Rafal is a sinner! Are you?

Many times I hear people saying, "Father, no matter what I do, I can't forgive. No matter how hard I pray, I can't forgive because the wound runs very, very deep."

So what to say to that person?

The answer comes from the Gospel: Jesus says, "If you don't forgive, how can you ask your Father to forgive you when you are in the wrong?"

The conversation between Peter and Jesus that we have in our Gospel reading today is actually a commentary on the fifth beatitude, which Jesus stated way back in Chapter 5 of St. Matthew's Gospel: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

On September 24-25, there is a Jewish Feast, Yom Kippur.

It is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Yom Kippur means “Day of Atonement,” “For on this day He will forgive you, to purify you, that you be cleansed from all your sins before God.” Lev 16:30

On that day, everybody admits their mistake all together. Try to only think if we all would have that day once a year sincerely, the world would be so different.

But you know our Yom Kippur is not reserved for one day; it is every day.

If you say Our Father Daily, sincerely, and consistently, you admit that you are a sinner, and you accept God’s forgiveness under one condition: Only if you will forgive someone else.

And forgive us our debts,

As we also have forgiven our debtors.

The Servant from the Gospel who received great kindness, all the debt was forgiven, refused to forgive a fellow servant's much smaller debt.

If we don't forgive, God might treat us the same way.

Our own forgiveness depends on our willingness to forgive others.

There is a story about a man who some of you could hear about - Rudolf Hoess.

He was the commandant of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II.

Rudolf Hoess came from a Catholic family and was an altar boy in his childhood.

He even made a pilgrimage to Lourdes with his parents.

The sad moment in his life that possibly affected his whole life happened when Rudolf was thirteen.

As he hurried downstairs at school with his classmates on a Saturday morning, he accidentally pushed another boy, causing him to break his ankle. Rudolf was punished with two hours' detention. Conscientious as always, he mentioned his transgression in his weekly confession the same day. He did not report the incident at home, however, not wishing "to spoil Sunday for my parents," as he wrote, adding: "They would learn about it soon enough during the coming week."

The same evening his confessor, a good friend of his father, visited the family. The following morning Rudolf's father scolded and punished him for not reporting the pushing incident right away.

Since the family telephone was out of order, there had been no other visitors, and none of his classmates lived in their neighborhood, Rudolf concluded that the priest must have broken the seal of the confessional.

"My faith in the holy profession of the priesthood was smashed, and doubts began to stir within me," Hoess wrote.

"After this incident, I could no longer trust any priest."

He changed confessors and soon stopped going to confession altogether.

He gradually advanced in his career, joining the NSDAP and taking on more responsible tasks for the Germans.

He was active in the Dachau camp, and then, when it was necessary to establish a new concentration camp in Auschwitz, there was no better candidate than him.

And he, in a very effective way, turned this camp into a death factory.

After the war ended, Hoess was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by hanging in the camp where he caused the death of thousands, millions of innocent people.

Hoess was awaiting execution in the prison in Wadowice, the same city in Poland where Pope St. John Paul II was born and raised.

While in that prison, he requested to see a priest.

But no priest could be found in the area who was willing to hear Hoess's confession.

Perhaps they didn’t know the German language, or maybe it was just an excuse because many priests spoke German at that time.

Perhaps they were afraid of confronting this man, in the opinion of many - a real monster.

Then a priest who had almost been killed by Hoess because he had attempted to visit the camp and the prisoners a few years earlier decided to visit him.

Father Władysław Lohn, a Jesuit priest who had served as a provincial and was then the chaplain of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Łagiewniki near Kraków, where St. Sister Faustina Kowalska lived.

The confession lasted eight hours.

The concerned guard looked through the peephole to see what was happening inside.

Rudolf Hoess was kneeling on the floor and crying, and his confessor was standing over him.

The next day, Father Władysław Lohn returned for a second time.

They talked again for hours. Hoess received Holy Communion.

The confession took place three days before Divine Mercy Sunday.

Was He forgiven? I truly believe He was.

Is He in heaven? All the conditions were fulfilled.

My dear Brothers and Sisters,

Forgiving can be hard, especially when we've been deeply hurt. We all have this experience.

ONLY THROUGH FORGIVENESS CAN WE LEARN how to love.

Only that way we will love others as we are loved by God.