HOMILY WEEK 08 05 – Year I
Forgiveness – Fruit of Faith
(Sirach 44:1, 8-13; Ps 149; Mark 11:11-25)
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Why is it impossible to starve in a desert? One can always eat the sand which is under our feet!
The readings today provide us with a spiritual sandwich that is all about faith and forgiveness. We are encouraged to pray for faith that produces forgiveness.
The first reading is like the first slice of bread in a sandwich. It is all about the faith of our ancestors that made them righteous and godly.
The bulk of the gospel is the meat in the sandwich. It is all about a lack of faith. First, a fig tree serves as an image or metaphor of the Jewish religion at the time of Jesus. The fig tree is barren and produces no fruit. Jesus curses it and it dies.
The Jesus goes in the Temple and finds that, like the fig tree, it too is barren, corrupt, and not producing the fruit of true faith, so Jesus cleanses the Temple, driving out all those who were making it a commercial business and not a house of prayer.
Then, after this incident, the apostles notice that the fig tree has died. That completes the meat of the sandwich. The fig tree was a metaphor for the lack of faith of the Jewish religion and their leaders at the time of Jesus.
Then suddenly, the focus shifts to faith. Jesus urges us to have faith and great things can happen in our life. We can even move mountains. The last line of the Gospel mentions the mountain of unforgiveness. A strong faith will be able to let go of revenge and forgive those who hurt us. That is probably the most common and the biggest mountain that any or all of us have to move in our lives.
Jesus mentions forgiveness as the best fruit of faith. This links with the ancestors of old in the first reading, and provides the bottom slice of bread of our sandwich of faith and forgiveness.
In Matthew 18, Jesus shows us how to forgive. The best thing we can do is share our hurt feelings with those who hurt us, with love, not getting even but rather just emptying ourselves of our hurt feelings and letting them go. I like to call this process “communicating with love.” We simply share our feelings without any attempt at revenge, getting even, name calling, etc. We let go of all expectations, because in the words of one psychologist, “to confront with expectation is already manipulation.” It is not really pure love, and only pure love as forgiveness breaks the cycle of violence in the world. Then we create a space within us for the forgiveness from God to flow to all who hurt us and we are set free from anger and resentment. The mountain has been moved.
One man shared with me how his family forgave him for what he did to them when he was drinking. He sat and listened to their feelings. He soaked up their pain and then he humbly asked them to forgive him, as he was sick and did not know what he was doing. Sensing that he was sincere in his contrition, they were able to let go of their anger and truly forgive him from the heart.
The Eucharist that we celebrate now is an experience of forgiveness for us, empowering us to go out, to apologize to those we hurt, to forgive those who hurt us.
So, let us pray for a faith that moves the mountains of unforgiveness that is so common in so many people today. Let us pray for a faith the produces a harvest of forgiveness.
