Homilies

When do we give up? I think that is one of the questions the Lord addresses in today’s Gospel.

There is a phrase often used in the business world that applies to much of life: the sunk cost fallacy. We have spent so much time, money, or effort on something that we feel we must keep doing it, even when it is not accomplishing what we hoped. Sometimes the best choice is to start over and endure the pain of doing so.

People often struggle with the way the Lord talks about family, because he seems to distance himself even from the concept of it.

But over the years, I have noticed something unusual. The people who complain the most about these sayings often have the most difficult relationships with their own families. They object to the Lord saying these things, but then they are always fighting with their relatives. They are distant from some of them and no longer speak to others.

When we hear this parable, we often think of deathbed conversions. We think of the repentant thief crucified beside Jesus, or of someone who comes to faith very late in life. And perhaps something in us objects: they did not go through the difficult part of the Christian life. They did not spend years and decades struggling to be good and holy. They just slipped in at the last minute.

This seems like an unusual passage to choose for a Gospel reading. There’s really nothing happening here. It’s three verses, mostly a list of people who were there.

And yet, tucked into that list is a small detail that matters: “and many others.” It doesn’t tell us who they were. It simply tells us that many other people were with Jesus, supporting his ministry and playing an essential part in it.

The Lord tells us that the one who has been forgiven much will show great love. But think back to this past Sunday. In Matthew’s Gospel, we heard the parable of the master who forgave his servant an immense debt. That servant then went out and refused to show the same kind of forgiveness to someone else.

That creates an interesting contrast with what the Lord says today. In the parable, the one who was forgiven an immense, if not impossible, debt did not respond with love at all. So why does this sinful woman respond differently? Why does she love greatly when the servant in the parable did not?

I think we’ve all met people whom you can never please. No matter what you do, it’s never the right thing. They always have another complaint. But that is not what this Gospel is about, although there are similarities. Jesus is describing people who want their own decisions affirmed.

They play the flute, and you should dance. They sing a dirge, and you should weep. That is how the Pharisees and the Sadducees are behaving. It’s not that they can’t be pleased. It’s that the only way to please them is to do exactly what they want. They want control, and Jesus and John the Baptist are not giving them that control.

This scene in the Gospel has been depicted in art many times. For many people, especially mothers, it is a deeply emotional scene. But it also shows us something important about our faith.

One of the great challenges in the early Church was getting people to accept that God truly became man. There were people who did not want to believe that Jesus was truly human. They wanted to believe that it was somehow an appearance, that it had been faked. They were scandalized by the Crucifixion. God dying on a cross—that is difficult to accept.

We are astoundingly capable of being self-centered. We can put ourselves—our desires, our wants, our will—above everything and everyone. We can make ourselves the center of the universe and measure everything by what it means for us. And I think that is at the heart of this parable.

We hear today’s Gospel as a lesson about forgiveness: we must forgive if we are to be forgiven. And certainly that is its message. But Jesus also shows us what can keep that lesson from ever reaching the heart. He shows us someone who receives an extraordinary gift and goes on living as though nothing has changed.

“But when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.”

I often hear people use this verse to justify studying the faith. And I think that is reasonable. We need knowledge of the faith in order to live it out. Knowledge of God is valuable to us. But knowledge comes in two broad varieties, and sometimes we give priority to the wrong one.

The first is the kind of knowledge we associate with school. We go into a classroom, sit down, and listen to a lecture. Or we read a book and think about a subject. That knowledge gives us frameworks for understanding the world and the situations we face.

We commonly hear someone speaking about another person say, “He’s a good man.” Rarely does the sentence stop there, though. It’s usually, “He’s a good man, but he’s kind of cheap.” Or, “He’s a good man, but he has a bit of a temper.” It’s always, “He’s a good man, but” something.

And that makes sense. We are all sinners. But I think it’s that “but” that Christ is talking about here in the Gospel.

Although these are the ordinary readings of the day, not readings proper to this saint, they fit remarkably well with the life of Saint Peter Claver, whom we celebrate today. He spent his life ministering to slaves. In fact, he called himself “the slave of slaves forever.” That was how he wanted to be known.

Peter Claver, who was canonized by Pope Leo XIII, used every resource available to him in that service. He had been born into a better life, but he laid those advantages aside and devoted himself to serving slaves. He was there on the shores as the boats arrived in the New World, ministering to them, tending their wounds, and offering them baptism. It is estimated that he may have baptized up to three hundred thousand people. He poured out his life offering them the Gospel. Cf. Society of Jesus, “In September, let us pray to St Peter Claver”; Leo XIII, In plurimis, §20 and n. 27.

Joseph is a righteous man, and that is why he was unwilling to expose Mary to shame.

To understand that, we have to look back to the book of Deuteronomy, where we get the law of Moses for the people living in the land of Israel. It addresses what happens when a man marries a woman who claims to be a virgin and then discovers that she is not. There is a process to follow, but it amounts to this: he takes her to the city gate, shames her before the elders, and then she is taken to the entrance of her father’s house and stoned to death for having lied to him. Cf. Deut 22:13–21.