Thursday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 18:21—19:1

The last part of Matthew‘s discourse on the church is about forgiveness. This is not unconnected with the previous section on excommunicating the unrepentant brother or sister. As soon as a brother or sister does repent, there must be forgiveness—not just once, but indefinitely—”seventy-seven times”.

The reason is given in the parable which Jesus speaks about the two servants in debt. The one who had a huge debt to the king was forgiven, but then refused to forgive a relatively trivial debt owed to him by a fellow servant. Understand that ten thousand talents then would be the equivalent of hundreds of millions in a major currency today, and the 300 denarii would have been the equivalent of about three months’ wages.

In the Gospel, the ones with the big debt to the king are clearly ourselves; the ones with the small debts to us are our brothers and sisters.

We do not expect God to forgive us once or twice or any limited number of times, but every time. It is nowhere written that we have, say, only ten chances of going to confession and, once our quota is used up, there is nothing left. But if that is true of our relationship with God, it also has to be true in our relationships with others. We can never refuse an offer of reconciliation. And, we might add, forgiveness is much easier to fully complete when reconciliation has taken place.

This is not at all the same as turning a blind eye to wrongdoing. Yesterday’s text made that very clear. We are talking about healing divisions between people; we must never put obstacles in the way of that.

We have now come to the end of this discourse indicated by the first sentence of chapter 19:

When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

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Thursday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Ezekiel 12:1-12

Ezekiel is instructed by God to go through an elaborate mime as a message to his people so as to warn them of the coming deportation of the people of Jerusalem into exile in Babylon. The people are described by God as rebels, as people who have eyes, but do not see, have ears, but do not hear—because they do not want to. Jesus will use similar terms in speaking of the people who refused to listen to him. He will quote from Isaiah, who received these instructions from Yahweh when he was being called as a prophet:

Go and say to this people:
‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.’
Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes
and listen with their ears
and comprehend with their minds
and turn and be healed.
(Isaiah 6:9-10; see also Matt 13:14-15)

Ezekiel is told to pack up all his things like a person leaving home and going off into distant exile. Maybe when the people see him doing this its meaning will begin to dawn on them and they will realise that it is pointing to their rebellious behaviour.

The packing is to be done by day in the sight of all, but then he is to slip out in the evening, i.e. in such a way that he is seen as leaving covertly. He is to leave in darkness, through a hole in the mud wall of his house. His face is to be covered so that he cannot see the countryside which he is entering. All this is to make Ezekiel, the Lord’s prophet, a symbol or sign for what is going to happen to Israel.

Ezekiel did everything just as the Lord had commanded in full sight of the people. (We need to remember that he was a prophet and people would wonder about the significance of his rather strange actions.)

The following morning God again spoke to Ezekiel. When the people ask the prophet what is the meaning of what he is doing, they are to be told that the oracle (the mime is understood as having a message from God) is directed against the people of Jerusalem and the whole of Israel everywhere.

The meaning of Ezekiel’s mime is then clearly spelt out. The people will go into exile and banishment and King Zedekiah (“the prince who is among them”) will carry his own belongings and go through a hole in the city wall; his face will be covered so that he will not be able to see the country.

In fact, Nebuchadnezzar will come and destroy Jerusalem and the people will be brought off into exile to Babylon. During the siege of the city, King Zedekiah and his army will try to escape through a breach in the city walls. But he was captured by the Babylonians and brought to Riblah. There his two sons were killed in his presence and then his eyes were put out before he was brought off to Babylon (see 2 Kings 25). The king’s blindness is a symbol of the blindness of the whole people.

In the Gospel Jesus frequently is seen healing the blind (those who cannot see) and the deaf (those who cannot hear) and the mute (those who cannot speak). These are afflictions all of us can suffer from, and they prevent us from knowing and carrying out what God wants in our lives. Let us ask today for healing and docility to God’s will for us:

Lord, let me see… (Luke 18:41)

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