A Servant's Work Is Never Done

Jesus said to the Apostles:
"Who among you would say to your servant
who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,
'Come here immediately and take your place at table'?
Would he not rather say to him,
'Prepare something for me to eat.
Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink.
You may eat and drink when I am finished'?
Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?
So should it be with you.
When you have done all you have been commanded, say,
'We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.'"

This passage from the Gospel of Luke is not one of my favorites.  In the "make you feel good scale" where one indicates a real bummer and ten puts you on cloud nine, I would rate this as a three. Now, just because I don't like it doesn't mean I don't appreciate what it says.

It is part of human nature to place a premium value on the time we have expended and effort made to complete a task.  For example, a movie star works for six solid weeks on the next blockbuster hit that will make him or her the talk around the dinner table nationwide, at least that is what they think.  The movie comes out and it is panned by the critics and people stay away from it in droves and the movie is quickly forgotten by all but the star of the same.  He or she worked very hard and did not get the recognition that they felt that they deserved.  Oh, did I mention, they were paid six million dollars for their part?  So this person held his/her labor at one sport on the spectrum while others did not hold it in such esteem.  But they were paid the wages that they agreed to accept for their work and that should make an end of it but inside the star was looking for more. 

In our relationship with Christ, we must always be ready to do more.  Even if we follow faithfully absolutely everything He tells us to do, we are doing only the minimum.  We have to be ready to come in from the fields and serve Christ.  There was no saint that was more cognizant of this fact than St. Francis of Assisi.  Francis worked his whole life building up his order of poor men.  His time was all spoken for,  He prayed late into the night and considered his welfare secondary to the welfare of his brothers.  When his time on earth was almost over, he told his brothers, "Let us begin now, for until now we have done nothing."  

Please Read, Please Help the Poor Souls in Purgatory 

We have a very loving God.  He sent us His only Son who took upon Himself all of the sins of the world, past, present, and the sins yet to be committed.  All of these sins were forgiven when Jesus died on the Cross.  For this, we must be forever grateful.  But, if Jesus died and all sins were forgiven why would a place like Purgatory be needed?  Isn't this slapping the crucified Christ and telling Him that His saving death was not enough?  Actually, no.  Read further and hopefully, my poor attempt at an explanation will help you understand.

Once I was playing softball in a vacant lot across from my childhood home.  In Chicago, we play Clincher softball.  A Clincher is a large softball and it is played using underhand slow pitch. I was up at bat and the pitcher sent me a beautiful pitch, it was coming in low and slow, just where I liked them to be.  I swung the bat but was a bit too early and I tipped the ball to the first base side and it hit the fence of the house behind our field and went through a window making a crash that I swear was heard around the world.  Suddenly, I was the only person standing in the field.  There was no point in running away, the neighbor knew who played in the field.  He came out and surveyed the damage.  I looked at him and was very scared. He saw I was alone and said to not worry, that this could be fixed. and that I was forgiven because accidents happen.  He measured the window and said he would be back soon with the glass.  Shortly he came back and he removed the broken pieces, laid in a fresh bead of putty and the window was as good as new.  He then turned to me and gave me the receipt for the glass and asked if I would please ask my parents to give me the money for the glass.  I looked at the receipt, it was for five whole dollars - a fortune for a kid who was making twenty-five cents a week for an allowance.  I gulped and went to see my Dad. There was no sense in seeing Mom about this, she would just send me to Dad.  He said he saw what happened, looked at the receipt and pulled out his wallet and gave me the five dollars.  He did not holler, he said accidents happen and he would front the money and I could do extra chores to pay him back. 

So in our little story, we have an offense, a broken piece of glass.  We have repair of the issue and forgiveness, but we still had to deal with repaying my father for the money the glass cost.  I was forgiven, but the effect on the family budget had to be cured, I had to restore what I had broken. These extra chores can be likened in a very imperfect way to purgatory.  We all sin on earth and our sins are all forgiven but we have left on our soul the effects of our sins. The sin is gone, but the stain, caused by our attachment to sin, remains.  It is this stain that those of us in Purgatory are getting rid of.  Heaven is a place where no evil is allowed to exist because it is a place where we see God face to face.  

When we die in the grace of God, we will still have all of these stains that have to be bleached out. For example, when you died, you hated George because he stole your pencil (or whatever) and you left earth with this on your soul.  What would happen if you met George in heaven?  Discord at the very least would follow.  So you, yourself, will choose to go to purgatory because in your love for God you will know that this burden needs to be fully released.  

Purgatory is a painful place.  The pain comes from the fire of God's love and your longing to be with Him in heaven.  Purgatory is also a joyful place because all of the people there know that at one point in the future this suffering will end and they will be with God in heaven.  The souls in Purgatory pray unceasingly. The sad part is that they cannot pray themselves out of Purgatory.  The time for making up for temporal punishment for sins is while we are on earth through our prayers and sacrifices.  So the Poor Souls, some who have been there for centuries as we reckon time, need our help, our prayers, and our sacrifices to help them escape Purgatory and enter heaven earlier than they might if depending on themselves. Purgatory is a joyful place.  If you were to offer a poor soul the chance to come back to earth, he or she would reject that choice because of the great happiness they feel at being assured that they cannot offend God anymore and that soon they will be with Him face to face. That joy is greater than any joy we can experience on earth. 

How can we help them?  Well, we can offer our own prayers and sacrifices and we can offer them our mass attendance and the grace from every time we take the Holy Eucharist. The Mass and the Eucharist are the most efficient ways.  From the website "Our Catholic Prayers"  A link to their website is below. 

In purgatory, the souls of many of those who have died in God’s grace undergo purification so that they may enter heaven. The Prayer of St. Gertrude, below, is one of the most famous of the prayers for souls in purgatory. St. Gertrude the Great (pictured at left) was a Benedictine nun and mystic who lived in the 13th century. According to tradition, our Lord promised her that 1000 souls would be released from purgatory each time it is said devoutly.

 

Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen

Our Catholic Prayers WEbsite

Reading The Fine Print in The Gospel

Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
"Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.  
That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold,
along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
in payment of the debt.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.'
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.

When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants

who owed him a much smaller amount.

He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,

'Pay back what you owe.'

Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,

'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'

But he refused.

Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison

until he paid back the debt.

Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,

they were deeply disturbed,

and went to their master and reported the whole affair.

His master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant!

I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.

Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,

as I had pity on you?'

Then in anger, his master handed him over to the torturers

until he should pay back the whole debt.

So will my heavenly Father do to you,

unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart."

The truth is simple, by Christ's death on the cross we were forgiven of our sins and on that day the gates of heaven swung open wide to admit believers into the bliss of eternal life with God in heaven.  This is truth in its simple yet glorious form, and God will certainly keep His end of the bargain.  

Do you remember Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the first version with Gene Wilder?  At the beginning of the tour of his candy factory each child had to sign a contract. The contract started with huge print and as it cascaded down the wall the print got smaller and smaller until it was minuscule.  The words, no matter how large or small all formed the basis of the agreement between Willy and the children. God does not use fine print in His contract with us, but we as humans tend to read the "good" things and gloss over the things that obligate us.  

It is true that we are forgiven.  The sins we commit against the dignity of God are forgiven as soon as we confess them.  We, in turn, are expected to forgive our fellow humans for what they do against us.  I can hear them coming now, the "buts."  Some of us are willing to forgive everyone except him or her or this group or that group because the evil that they committed against us was so great.   Those of us who are "But" people are in a whole heap of trouble because we are the unforgiving servant in the reading above and as you can see, it does not go well for him 

Forgiveness is the one selfish thing we can do that is approved by God.  When we forgive someone who has hurt us deeply, we are accruing graces through that righteous act and we are making our soul more God like in its attitude and outlook and we are doing something good for ourselves.  By forgiving even the biggest grievance we have against another, it becomes easier to forgive the smaller things and our life and our serenity is not disturbed as much by the thoughtless acts of others.  We also become more thoughtful ourselves and gain greater ability to put ourselves into someone else's shoes and in doing this we are offended less. Forgiving is a win/win situation for us while not forgiving is a lose/lose. 

God could not make his desires any clearer, but He does repeat Himself so as to make sure we have the opportunity to absorb the requirements he has placed upon us. 

1.  "Father forgive them, they know not what they do"
2.  "Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times."
3.  "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"  
4.  “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”
5. So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
6. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

So, I think it is easily seen that forgiveness is one of the most important parts of being a Christian.  The word "but" cannot be used to absolve us from this duty.  It is NOT easy for us to forgive everything.  The word everything encompasses evils that are unimaginable in their scope.  Can we forgive Hitler for the Holocaust? We have to!  Can we forgive Stalin the millions of people he killed? We have to.  Forgiving is not approving what a person has done. The judgement against the Hitler's and Stalin's and bin Laden's of this world will be rendered by God, not by us.  We need not and should not approve what these people have done but we should leave it to God to mete out what payment these evil people should receive. No, it is not easy to be a Christian, if done right, being a Christian will always cause at least a little inconvenience in your life as you look deep inside yourself to see where you and Christ are most alike and where you are not.  Forgiveness is a habit and like all habits, it becomes easier the more you practice it.  When someone offends you, just think of Jesus on the Cross and what He said, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do.   There is no law saying you can't use those same words is there?

PLEASE PRAY FOR THE POOR SOULS IN PURGATORY. PRAY FOR YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY OF COURSE, BUT DON'T FORGET THE FORGOTTEN SOULS WHO HAVE NO ONE TO PRAY FOR THEM.