Homily - 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Mercy Triumphs Judgement

 

Homily

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 13, 2026

 

I have been a deacon for ten years and a husband for thirty-five. I am a father of two, and a grandfather of four, which means I have had decades of practice at the one job I never applied for: unofficial Supreme Court of Other People’s Choices. I can clock a late arrival of my coworker, criticize the speeding driver, and silently complain about how others treat people. The punch line, of course, is that I then stand up here and preach about the servant who was forgiven ten thousand talents and still throttled a man over a hundred denarii. I am not blind to my own hypocrisy. My wife won’t say, but she already knows the real parable is this deacon who keeps a running a checklist in his head and then wonders why the Merciful One keeps sending him back to Confession repeating: “Have mercy on me, father; I judged again.” Mercy, it turns out, has a sense of humor. It keeps putting the gavel in my hand just long enough for me to notice just how ridiculous it looks.

 

Peter comes to Jesus with a question that at first sounds generous: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Seven already went beyond what many rabbis required. Seven is the Bible’s number for completeness. It should have been enough. Jesus answers with a number that is not really a number: not seven times, but seventy times seven times. What Jesus is saying is, “Stop counting. Forgiveness is not a ledger. It is a way of life.”

 

He then tells a parable that should really disturb us. A servant owes the king ten thousand talents, a debt beyond repayment. The king has every legal right to sell him, his wife, his children, and all he owns, and that still would not be enough. The man falls to his knees and begs. Then the king does what no court of this world would ever do: he forgives the whole debt. He wipes the books clean. That is what Jesus did for us on the Cross. He paid a debt too vast for us to imagine, much less repay. The perfect sacrifice defeated death, restored life, and offers us the fruit of His work – eternal life. Do we realize how profound that is? Or do we take it for granted? In the struggles of ordinary life, it is hard to remember mercy when grievances, injustices, and betrayals, real or imagined, offend us.

 

That same servant, his debt forgiven, then finds a fellow servant who owes him one hundred denarii. A denarius was one day’s wage. So the debt is about a hundred days’ pay; real money, a debt that we can imagine, but nothing next to a talent. In the Attic/Roman measure used in the Gospels, one talent was about 6,000 denarii. So, I did the math (I needed a calculator); ten thousand talents is well over 100,000 years wages. A hundred thousand years! How long would it take any of us to repay that?

 

For a hundred days’ wages, the ungrateful servant seizes the man by the throat and has him thrown into prison. It is hard when someone has wronged us, but Jesus calls us further: let go of the hurt and embrace the mercy God has already shown us. When the king hears of this, his judgment is severe: “Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” The unforgiving servant is handed over until he pays the last penny. And that is a long, long time.

 

Jesus summarizes His parable with words that cut to the core: “So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.” That is the meaning of the Cross. Jesus paid that debt, for you and for me and for all of us throughout the world across all time. The perfect Sacrifice by the perfect Priest. That is why we are here: to praise God, celebrate His victory, and learn His mercy.

 

Sirach said the same centuries earlier: “Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Could anyone nourish anger against another and still expect healing from the Lord?” Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner clings to them. We hug grievances because they feel like justice, like control, like holding that gavel.

 

But we are not the judge. Saint Paul reminds us that none of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. When God spun the universe into existance, He knew us, down to every hair on our head, He saw us, weak and failed, and He loved us, to the end. Christ died and rose to be Lord of both the dead and the living. The throne of judgment belongs to Him alone. We do not see the whole heart. We do not know the full story. We do not carry the wounds of the Cross. God alone judges with perfect knowledge, perfect mercy, and perfect love.

 

And here is the Gospel that should bring us to our knees: judgment is not the last word. “The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.” As far as the east is from the west, that is how far has He put our transgressions away from us. Start in the east and go west: how long will it take you to get there? You never arrive. The distance is unreachable. That is the length, width and depth of God’s mercy for us. The debt we owe Him is the ten thousand talents. Every Absolution, every Eucharist, every morning we wake still breathing is proof that we are the beneficiary of His mercy.

 

St. James writes that mercy triumphs over judgment. That is not a slogan. It is the shape of the Cross. On Calvary, justice and mercy meet. The just Judge takes the penalty Himself so the guilty may go free. If that is how God treats us, the only fitting response is to treat others the same way. This does not mean pretending sin is harmless, or that justice never matters. The king in the parable still names the debt. Forgiveness is not the denial of wrong. It is the refusal to let wrong have the last word. It is placing the other person, and ourselves, back into the hands of the only One who can judge rightly. We owed a debt with no end. Jesus paid what we ourselves could never repay.

 

So the question is not theoretical; it is practical and real: Who is the fellow servant on whose small debt we are still clutching? Someone in our family? A parishioner? A co-worker? Someone who wounded us years ago? We have been forgiven a fortune. Will we choke another over pocket change?

 

Right now, before we approach the altar, examine the ledgers we keep in our hearts. Ask for the grace to cancel what we have no right to collect. Confess the grudges we cling to. Then receive the Body of Christ, who paid all debt, and go out as debt-free people: who have been shown infinite mercy, and are now called to show mercy.