The 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, September 13, 2026
St. James Cathedral

Watch this homily! (begins at 38:10)

 
My friends, there are times when our faith, our tradition, the call of the Gospel is so profoundly counter-cultural. I think this is one of those times. We gather this weekend of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and we hear one of the most challenging messages of our faith.
 
“Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.” So writes Ben Sira, the second century B.C. author of our first reading today. Can you get anymore unjust than what happened on 9/11?
 
Some of us can remember where we were when we first heard the news that Tuesday morning twenty-five years ago. I remember feeling such revulsion, such anger at this cowardly act of mass murder. I wondered if perhaps there really was a place for vengeance in our moral life – and if there is, this situation certainly cried out for it loud and clear. 
 
Then Ben Sira calls out to us from 2200 years ago, “The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail.” Ben Sira was a native of Jerusalem, who had studied the Jewish Scriptures, and wrote his book in order to instruct Jews who were now living in the midst of a Greek culture that did not share many of their values. He wrote, in part, to show how the Jewish way of life was counter-cultural, was superior to the Greek way of life. 
 
What Ben Sira was advocating was living a life that reflected how God had dealt with the people of Israel. In the face of repeated offenses against the Lord, God always showed mercy, always offered Israel another chance. After receiving such mercy, if a person were to refuse forgiveness to another, how could they expect God to treat them mercifully?
 
Seeking vengeance and hanging on to anger at another may be the way of the world, it may be our initial gut-level reaction to injustice, but it is not God’s way, it is not the way God deals with us. So this ancient sage speaks to us today, in the midst of the anniversary of this horrible act of terror, and says, think of your last days when you will come face to face with a God who has forgiven you everything, and then act in accord with the mercy shown you.
 
Today’s Gospel is equally challenging. “How many times must I forgive one who sins against me?” Peter asks. He thinks he is reflecting the great mercy he has witnessed in the ministry of Jesus, so he suggests, “Do I have to forgive seven times?” Think about that. To forgive someone seven times for an offense is a lot of forgiveness. But Jesus tells Peter “not seven times but seventy-seven times.” In other words, Jesus tells Peter that there can be no limits to the willingness to forgive.
 
To illustrate his point Jesus tells a parable that shifts the focus from the quantity of forgiveness – how many times do I have to forgive? – to the quality of forgiveness, by giving the reason for no limits.
 
If God, like the king who forgave his servant a great debt, has forgiven us, how can we not show mercy to others? If God places no limits on forgiveness, how can we? No limits on forgiveness – really? Even for people who fly airplanes into buildings? Sometimes it just seems like there has to be limits.
 
But then we gather each week around the table of the Eucharist, in the shadow of the cross, and encounter love and forgiveness that has no limits. We are free, in the face of this love and forgiveness that has been poured out on us, to place limits on forgiving others. God does not force us to imitate his forgiveness of us.
 
The unforgiving servant, unable to show others the mercy he had been shown, was dealt with in the same way he dealt with others. God is willing to show mercy to sinners, but we must be prepared to show mercy to other people. To those who refuse to show mercy, God will show strict justice. In other words I will be treated in the same way that I treat others.
 
This is so central to who God is that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray the way he prayed, he told them specifically how to pray for forgiveness: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This is what he taught us by what he said and by the way he lived and died. From the cross in Luke’s Gospel Jesus prays, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” 
 
There is another way – the way of the world. We can respond with vengeance. We can match the violence done to us with more violence. We can allow those initial feelings of revulsion and anger to direct our thoughts and actions and seek to inflict great harm on those who have harmed us. We see that response all around us today.
 
But, the message of the Gospel is profoundly counter-cultural. Jesus calls us beyond the deep hurt and sorrow that a heinous act of terrorism can bring. He calls us deeper into the unlimited love and mercy that God has shown us down through the ages. Jesus tells us that there is a better way than the way of the world – a way that leads to justice and peace; a way that can witness to the Reign of God.
 
Long ago St. Paul told the Church in Rome, and he tells us today, that “Christ died and came to life that he might be Lord of both the living and the dead.” We give thanks that he is Lord of those who died on that Tuesday morning twenty-five years ago. We pray that he may take them to himself and hold them in everlasting life. We give thanks that he is Lord of the living and pray that he accompany with tender care all those family and friends left behind.
 
We ask him, this Lord of life, that as we encounter him at this sacred altar – him whose love and forgiveness knows no limits – that we may be shaped more and more in his image. May we leave here nourished and strengthened to live lives, and build a world, that reflects God’s unlimited love and forgiveness.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni