The Super-Rich King and 9/11

At this Sunday’s Holy Mass, we will read a parable from St. Matthew’s gospel. Our English translation of the parable refers to a debtor owing “a huge amount” to his employer. The original Greek text reads “ten thousand talents.” The current U.S. dollar equivalent would be: $225,000,000. [Spanish]

In the royal throne room, the official groveled before his master.  Again, to translate literally from the Greek: the debtor did the king homage by kissing the royal hands and then prostrating himself on the floor.

Now, this king had some money. He possessed stunning power and largesse. The extent of his resources made even this particular IOU of 225 million seem small. He knew this poor little spendthrift of a provincial official would never be able to pay it back. The official had squandered the money on some terrible idea.

But the king liked the official anyway. Maybe the king enjoyed the official’s sense of humor, or appreciated his political loyalty, or maybe the official had superior military skills. Who knows?

‘Come on, get up, old boy! What’s $225 million among friends?  Go home, and give your wife and kids a kiss for me.’

Here’s the question: What kind of king is this? How did he manage to amass so much wherewithal that he could wave off a debt of a quarter-billion dollars without batting an eyelash, smiling indulgently?  Who has the power, the confidence, and the resources to act with such otherworldly magnificence?

Nineteen years since 9/11. Let’s remember: There is one point-of-view from which the Twin Towers in New York City, even when they stood a quarter-mile high, did not look tall. Those of us old enough to remember, we can tell our young people: ‘From the ground, those two towers made for an awesome spectacle.’ Someone Else, however, looked down upon them, with all-knowing eyes. They looked small to Him.

How can we Christians find it in ourselves to be genuinely forgiving?  How we say something like: “I hope everyone who died on September 11, 2001, can get to heaven somehow. Everyone. I pray for the thousands, of good guys. And I pray for the 19 bad guys, too. May we all be in heaven together someday.’

How can a Christian muster the magnanimity to pray for his enemies? To love his enemies. To want nothing other than to live in the Kingdom of God with both friends and foes alike?

I’ll tell you one thing: Will-power alone cannot bring it off. We human beings do not become merciful by our own force of will. The evil of the world dwarfs our natural virtues. If we presume to go up against the malice of Satan without God’s grace, we will be crushed instantly in a hail of debris.

But we can be merciful, because God is great. We can share in His infinite resources.

The Lord looks down and sees the world, His handiwork. When part of it is scarred by the ugliness of evil, He immediately sees how, by His infinite power, He will heal and rebuild. Because He sees a world full of His children. Not one falls outside the reach of His love. When one sins, He sees immediately how He will move the sinner to repentance by the calm light of truth. All things will be made right by the blood of Christ. The sinner will not be lost.

In other words, God has a bank account big enough to cover the most outrageous debts. When the planes and the buildings came crashing down on September 11, the Lord thought: This is terrible. But of course I will pour out everything needed to bring good even out of this, and the sun will rise again. God’s love makes even the most tremendous catastrophe look small. God always has a way to heal it, and make all things new.

The divine safety net of mercy will never collapse. It is no ponzi scheme. The Lord loans and loans and loans, never expecting repayment. And infinitely more wealth still sits in the Almighty bank.

May His Kingdom come. May He give us our daily bread. May He forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

To go back to the Greek text of the gospel reading one more time.  Our translation has it that the second servant owed the first “a very small amount.” Approximate calculation from the original text, in our currency:  $35.

The first servant owed the king $225 million. The second servant owed the first $35.

Certainly, you and I owe each other $35 here and there. Let’s make apologies, and do what we can to make it right. Then we can forget all about it, and we can go together to kiss the King’s hands and prostrate ourselves before Him. He will smile to see us together.

Not Bad, but Good: The PA Grand Jury Report

Today at Holy Mass we read the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. Pretty famous parable.

The king forgives a huge debt. Turns out that debtor has a debtor of his own, owing much less. But he refuses to forgive. The other servants are outraged. So the king calls his debtor back and righteously condemns him.

Who’s the main character of the parable? A question prompted the parable: Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother’s sins? So: I guess this parable is about the original debtor? About his failure to show mercy? Or maybe it’s about the fellow servants? Their zeal for justice?

No, silly. Obviously the parable is about: The King. God. The mercy of God. He has compassion. He sees reality.

He is the only one in the parable who isn’t desperate. Because He has no needs. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. He has no fear whatsoever of the unvarnished truth.

Out of kindness, in order to get everything straight for everybody, He initiates a reckoning. But He Himself has such endless wealth that He can afford to write off huge debts. It doesn’t matter. He has infinitely more. Infinitely more.

God is the hero of the parable. He is the hero of the Bible. And He is the Spouse of the Church.

…Everybody heard about the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report? How about: Anybody actually read it?

Probably not, because the nauseating recurrent narrative in the Catholic media has repeated itself: The report comes out, and the usual happens. Bishops everywhere begin to talk endlessly about themselves. (Because that is what they do.)

My question is: Why is the release of this grand-jury report an occasion for sorrow? Most of the sorrowful events recounted in it occurred twenty years or more ago. The original events are terribly sad, and sickeningly maddening. But the release of the report is not sad. The release of the report is a triumph. Of the truth.

This moment has come because: the victims have achieved heroic honesty. They have stood up. They have born witness to exactly what we, the Catholic Church, believe in: Justice. Chastity. Truthfulness. The victims have done this in spite of the excruciating pain involved in doing it.

Seems to me that our job right now is to honor these heroes. They have shown great faith in the infinite love of God. Sorting out good from evil in their lives has cost them an enormous struggle. But they did it. They triumphed. This is their hour.

I say: We should rejoice that they have climbed to the top of this terrifying mountain. Now they can see a beautiful sight. God is good, and there is hope.

Many of the sex offenders listed in the report have died. They have met justice. Those still alive should face justice, and let’s hope they will. Seems like we human beings can manage that; we can organize things so that criminals face justice, and a penalty, for what they have done.

copyright Steve Breen

One thing the report, and the reaction of the bishops the past 36 hours, shows: The bishops of the United States do not know how to organize that. That is: Seeing justice done. They don’t have the foggiest idea how to study facts and make careful judgments.

Thank you, grand jury, for pointing that out. But we knew that already. That has actually been perfectly obvious for many, many years.

All that, really, is just a tawdry sideshow to the real brilliance of the moment. What really happened when this report came out is this: A people abused and suffering stood up, spoke the truth, and brought about a new and better day.

Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

How many second chances ought we to give, Lord? Seventy times seven second chances.

In the parable we read at Holy Mass today, the servant owed the king a huge amount. After the servant begged for mercy, the king forgave the loan.

77 pardons in honor of Shawn Lavao?

We want to relate to the magnificently magnanimous king. But can we deny that some debtors really do push us too far? Everyone knows somebody who simply doesn’t know how to stay out of debt, and won’t learn. Black holes of the good will of everyone around them, helpless and incorrigible. They try the patience of good people beyond the breaking point.

So: Let’s give the first servant in the parable the maximum benefit of the doubt. Let’s say that he had borrowed from the king only this one time. Meanwhile, his fellow servant had borrowed from him, without repaying, over and over again. Let’s acknowledge that any of us, driven to the extreme by such a deadbeat relative or friend, would long since have let him or her rot in jail, rather than swoop in with an “emergency” loan again.

All this may have been true in the scenario outlined in the parable. But still the king faulted the first servant for his lack of mercy.

Now, is this a reasonable judgment, considering the genuine limitations of human generosity? I’ve had to say it myself; after all, it is true: “Look, I want to help you. But I am not made of money.”

So, to understand all this, I think we need to keep in mind the context of this exchange between St. Peter and the Lord. Peter asked how often he must forgive his brother immediately after the Lord Jesus had explained a particularly amazing power that the Church possesses. The Church, a living family with duly appointed authority figures, has the power to bind and to loose, in the name of God. The living authority of the Church keeps the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Both to bind and to loose. Holy Mother Church can and does bind. She can and does impose penalties–penalties with potentially horrifying and everlasting effects. There are things we have to stay far away from, if we know what’s good for us. Sacrilege, apostasy, abortion.

But the Church, when she binds someone with a penalty, always binds with the hope of ultimately loosing. Church penalties aim at correction and then restoration of communion. She never tires of forgiving the miscreant who repents. No one ever runs out of second chances with the Church. Everything the Church has belongs to everyone who humbly seeks Her goods, even if it’s a deadbeat who has confessed the same terrible sins too many times to remember.

So it doesn’t necessarily make any of us a bad person if we conclude that such-and-such cousin or nephew or old college roommate or former co-worker has come asking for help just one too many times. We individuals on our pilgrim way have our limits.

But what we can’t do is judge anybody any more harshly than Holy Mother Church does. And the Church is always ready to start over, as if today were the first day of a brand new friendship.

Hamlet and the 77 Pardons

Lord, how often must I forgive my brother? Answer: No less than 77 times.

Now, the Lord didn’t use the number 77 because Washington Redskins starting guard Shawn Lauvao wears jersey #77. Christ used 77 as shorthand for: always forgive the penitent brother.

Anyone ever seen Hamlet? That play would seem to have the opposite moral. Instead of “always forgive,” Hamlet focuses on revenge.

The evil uncle killed the good father, secretly, in cold blood, to steal the throne and the queen. The dead king’s ghost visits young Prince Hamlet, demanding revenge. Young Hamlet devises a stratagem by which to test the ghost’s story. Turns out the ghost speaks truth. So here comes revenge. At the end of the play, everyone winds up dead. No forgiveness; just brutal revenge.

Except: Young Hamlet and his nemesis Laertes forgive each other before they die. And the evil uncle Claudius tries to beg God for mercy. And the queen admits to Hamlet that she has done wrong in marrying her dead husband’s brother. And Ophelia begs mercy from God for everyone…

Christ told the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant to illustrate his 77-pardons theme. In the parable, the king intended to settle accounts. When he did so, no one quibbled with the accuracy of his records. His accounts showed his servant in debt to him. The servant did not deny it. To the contrary, the servant, presented with the truth, humbled himself before its very accuracy.

‘Yes, yes! I owe you big time! Just give me another chance.’

And the king took a haircut, as they say in the banking world—he faced the fact that he wasn’t getting the money the servant owed him. Then the king gave the servant a fresh start.

Thus do we see mercy and righteousness kiss: Everyone faces the full, ugly truth. Then everyone starts fresh. Mercy does not mean: no reckoning. It doesn’t mean running away from the truth; skip the facts; just pretend everything’s fine and nice!

No. Forgiving happens when the parties agree on the painful, evil, unpleasant facts. And then start over.

Prince Hamlet did not exactly proceed down the path of Christian mercy. He did a fair amount of stabbing with his rapier. On the other hand, there was something rotten in the state of Denmark. It would hardly have been merciful for the prince to pretend otherwise.

In fact, the greater the evil, the more merciless the truth feels to the conscience that, deep down, knows it’s guilty. Mercy does not come in the form of a goose feather pillow. It comes as a bracing, cold bath. But nothing can refresh the soul more. Facing the truth. And getting a fresh start. With all the dials set back to zero.

Merchant of Venice: Excellent Exegesis

What if the triune God never revealed Himself? Who would I worship?

Probably Virginia. Even if Virginia only included Augusta, Rockbridge, and Botetourt Counties, I would worship it. But it includes all the other counties, too! Especially Franklin and Henry.

Godlike in splendor. Idolizable if anything ever was.

…Had the opportunity to see a performance of Merchant of Venice at the American Shakespeare Center. The company executed the task with the usual aplomb. If they camped it up a bit, or indulged in tasteless physical comedy, they only did it to try to convey the humor of the text to their predominantly high-school-age audience.

The company also over-indulged, I think, in actually spitting on Shylock and Tubal. Does Shakespeare direct the actors to spit? No. The on-stage spittle only distracted us audience peoples. (Overheard in the bathroom: “Do they get paid extra since they spit on them?”)

The words, my friends! The words have more than enough bitterness of their own. The imprecations savor with plenty of verbal venom. Frinstance:

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

or

Let me say ‘amen’ betimes, lest the devil cross my
prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew.

The key to the play? The fact that it explains the Parable of the Unforgiving Steward. (It explains the whole New Testament pretty well.) And Shylock’s humanity.

The usurer’s avarice, his malice against Antonio, his stubbornness: none of these are literally monstrous. His daughter breaks his heart by eloping–and taking the family jewels with her. He rails against the monetary loss with a lump in his throat. What really pains him? Jessica’s betrayal. And the fact that none of the other Venetian fathers can be bothered to give him the tiniest doit of commiseration. They think nothing of treating the Jew with hard-hearted contempt.

Of course, Shylock’s heart hardens to stone. His maniacal craze for vindication—for justice! my bond!—paints the perfect caricature of blinkered, zealous man: Absolutely dead to rights, within the point-of-view of the rifle-sight. Shylock’s bond has all the force of law, and who could really gainsay his legal reasoning?

But, outside what the scope takes in: an agent of justice stands with an axe, an axe that will fall on me, and his claim on me has much more to it than my claim does.

Where did the Venetian hard-heartedness begin? Did Shylock wrong a Christian first, or did a Christian wrong him first? The profoundest truth of the play rests on the fact that it has no interest whatsoever in answering this question.

In the end, the ladies turned lawyers, Portia and Nerissa, manage to turn the central theme of the tragedy—just retribution—into comedy. Their men, who protest their honor too much, wind up reduced to unimpressive and unconvincing stammerings to explain their own untruth.

Justice? Please. For man it is impossible. Better to try to make friends. With unassuming gentleness. Maybe even love.

Unforgiving Steward, Dishonest Steward

As I reflect upon my meager efforts to discharge faithfully my sacred duties, I recall that I have tackled a good number of the Lord Jesus’ parables.

One of these days, I will present you with a handy compendium of my many tedious commentaries on the little stories of our Lord. In the meantime, here goes a ‘compare & contrast’ to whet the appetite…

The parable of the dishonest steward presents us with a great challenge. What does it mean?

Book of the Holy Gospels

Maybe it will help to compare and contrast this parable with the parable of the unforgiving steward.

Both parables present the same set of circumstances: a failed bureaucrat gets called to account by his master. Both stewards find themselves in desperate straits, because their boss has discovered their enormous incompetence.

But the two stewards react in diametrically opposed ways. The unforgiving steward initially begs his master’s mercy—and receives it—only to lose it by being stingy and unmerciful himself.

The dishonest steward, however, compounds his dishonesty by secretly forgiving his master’s debtors. Then he finds himself praised by his master for doing so.

One element of the stories that leaps out is this: The unforgiving steward utterly failed to understand his master’s thinking, whereas the dishonest steward understood his master even better than he knew.

The first steward promised to repay his own enormous personal debt to his master. The master knew that would never happen, so he wrote off the debt for good. But the servant failed to grasp that his master was being merciful with him. The steward marched out into the street believing his own nonsense about coming up with lots of money that he didn’t have and never would have.

The dishonest steward, on the other hand, was actually remarkably honest and practical with himself. He knew his limits and immediately took action to turn a desperate situation into a livable outcome. He knew that his very survival depended on his cultivating friends, so he used the means he had at hand to win some people over.

Can we doubt that his master smiled at this behavior precisely because this is the way in which he himself became rich? When he saw his steward seizing his opportunity, he thought to himself, ‘This dude really isn’t as much of a numbskull as I thought he was.’

Another common element of the two parables is this: In both cases, the masters possess enough wherewithal to write off massive losses indulgently. They both lose a lot of money because their stewards are incompetent, but they do not give the lost money a second thought. Instead, they focus on the persons before them.

So, the moral: God smiles on us when we humbly and practically seek the help we need to get our sinful butts to heaven.

The Really Rich King

[Click HERE to read the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.]

In the ancient Near East, monarchs and potentates employed provincial officials to manage government revenues. A free-handed king might allow one of his collection officers to borrow from the treasury. The official could use royal funds to build up a lavish household of his own and carry on like a little potentate himself.

But the royal accountants kept track of the money.

If someone in the imperial bureaucracy began to suspect that a particular official had borrowed more than he should from the king’s coffers, then a day of reckoning would come.

Our translation of the gospel parable refers to the debtor owing “a huge amount.” The Greek reads “ten thousand talents.”

The current U.S. dollar equivalent would be: $225,000,000.

In the royal throne room, the indebted official groveled pathetically before his master. Again, to translate literally from the Greek: he did the king homage by kissing the royal hands and then prostrating himself on the floor.

Now, this king possessed stunning power and largesse. The extent of his resources made this particular IOU seem small. He knew this poor little spendthrift would never be able to pay him back.

‘Come on, get up, old boy! What’s $225 million among friends? Go home, and give your wife and kids a kiss for me.’

Here’s the question: What kind of king is this? How did he manage to amass so much wherewithal that he could wave off a quarter-billion-dollar debt with an indulgent smile? Who has the power, the confidence, and the resources to act with such otherworldly magnificence?