24th Sunday in Ordinary Time - A - Sep. 13, 2020

Next Friday at sundown, the Jewish people will enter into their high holy days with the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  The holy days will conclude 10 days later with the celebration of Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement.  

In the weeks prior to Rosh Hashanah, Jews enter into a period of self-examination and repentance.  A shofar or ram’s horn is sounded each morning to wake people from their slumber, their moral slumber, and warn them of the coming day of judgement.  

As they prepare for the high holy days, Jews will recite short penitential prayers or poems called selichot.  God’s forgiveness and mercy is especially emphasized in these prayers.  And one of the most important psalms recited during this time is Psalm 103, which we recite in this weekend’s liturgy.  Perhaps we Catholics can enter into the spirit of our Jewish brothers’ and sisters’ preparation for the high holy days, as we too take a moment of self-examination and repentance.

One of the most monumental, and catastrophic, events of Jewish history was the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.  This event also had a tremendous impact on the direction of Christianity in its most formative years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.  In the wake of this event, Jewish religious leaders needed to ensure that their sacred traditions would be saved.  So they formally determined which books of sacred scripture would be regarded as canonical, and which would be left out.  This effort produced what is known as the Hebrew or Palestinian Canon of scripture, which organized and finalized the books contained in the Hebrew Bible, or the “Old Testament” as we call it.  The Book of Sirach, from which our first reading is taken, didn’t make the cut.  Some historians speculate that it was because it was originally written in Hebrew, but was translated into Greek where it became hugely popular.  Some believed that the original Jewish thoughts of the author had been subsequently modified by editors who were influenced by Greek ideas.

Other scholars think it was rejected because some of the teachings in Sirach seem to contradict Jewish law.  For example, Jewish law permitted retribution for an offense, as long as it was in proportion.  Sirach, however, seems to be anticipating the teachings of Jesus by advocating for forgiveness and mercy as a better response to injustice.  Sirach wanted people to surrender wrath, anger, and vengeance, and instead cultivate a culture of mercy and forgiveness.  The model for this was God.  They were to imitate God who had established a pattern of forgiveness of the Hebrew people, for their many sins and the many times they strayed away from the covenant.  The ideas of Sirach are very controversial, because he’s not calling merely for forgiveness of unintentional mistakes or thoughtlessness.  He’s calling for the forgiveness of outright injustice.  

Even though Sirach was excluded from the Hebrew Canon of scripture, it was still highly valued by many ancient Jewish teachers.  The Essenes at Qumran were an ancient desert community devoted to the study of sacred scripture day and night.  They highly prized Sirach and incorporated many of its teachings into the community’s rule of life.  It was thought that John the Baptist spent time with this community, and Jesus himself may have even had contact with them before beginning his public ministry.  Because Sirach provides such foundational wisdom to understanding the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels that later scholars who assembled the Greek Canon of scriptures included Sirach, and it is this Greek Canon that we Catholics follow today.

Our lives, we know, are marked by our triumphs and our failures.  Both stay with us, and both have the ability to change us.  But, our failures, when they are especially grave and most searing, can shake us from complacency.  We need to undergo a reckoning of our failures, and ask ourselves the question, “How did it come to this?”  Or, in other words, “How did I get here?”

Times of reckoning can also be hopeful.  Triumphs can follow from great failures.  But these triumphs often require radical reform.  The disaster of 70 AD and the destruction of Jerusalem led to the creation of the Bible.  The US Civil War led to the reconstruction of the South.  Our failures on 9/11 led to improved airport screening that has virtually eliminated airline hijacking worldwide.  Our church’s failures in preventing clergy sexual abuse have led to great reforms in the training of priests and holding bishops responsible.

However, we wait in hope for the triumph that will follow our failures in dealing with Covid-19.  We wait in hope for the triumph that will follow the killing of George Floyd.  There is still so much left undone.  But, we must first look backward in order to look forward.  We ask ourselves, “How did it come to this?”  And then allow that self-examination to shake us from complacency and move forward.

Our readings today invite us to look backward and see how Jesus’ suffering and death have brought undeserved forgiveness to each of us.  He died for us “while we were still sinners,” as St. Paul says.  Having been shown such great mercy and love in the past, going forward we must be forgiving of others.  If we are not, there will be a future reckoning and we will reap the consequences of our refusal.

God’s forgiveness provides us with a new start, a “new year” as it were.  As our Jewish brothers and sisters begin their new year, they and their traditions give us a pattern of recognizing gifts received in the past, as gifts to be given to others in the future.  As God has forgiven us, God expects us to be forgiving too, without limit, and really meaning it, from the heart, when we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”