Thirty-third Sunday of Year C
November 2007
If you are notified that the tax inspectors are coming to check on your books you would be very foolish indeed not to go over them yourself first and check that everything is in order.
If I am aware that there can be no enmity, no uncorrected injustice, no unhealed hurt, no outstanding apology, no unpaid debt, no unforgiven slight, in Eternal Life, then I would be very foolish indeed not to check my ‘books’ for any of these things and do my best to correct them, before I actually land in Eternal Life.
When it comes to describing the punishment of sinners after death, the Bible waxes lyrical with hyperbole. These graphic descriptions of the fate awaiting sinners is of the same genre as a loving parent’s warning to a child to avoid a certain place the parent knows to be dangerous, otherwise the ‘bogey man’ will get the child.
Since we are all sinners, in one way or another, the aim of these descriptions of the punishment awaiting sinners, is not to warn me of an impending reality but to urge me to do something about my condition now, before I reach Eternal Life.
God is totally good and has my total welfare always at heart. Therefore there can be no vengeance in God, no ‘getting his own back,’ no gratuitous punishing of His beloved child, no demanding of satisfaction.
On the other hand I cannot be running around in Eternal Life and not talking to some people, or embarrassed to meet others whom I have hurt, or avoiding somebody because I still owe them a debt, etc.
Therefore, between my death in this life and my entry into Eternal Life, there must be some form of reconciliation, some means by which justice is seen to be done, some way in which all hurt will be healed and forgiven to everyone’s satisfaction.
How this will happen or what form it will take we do not know.
I might console myself with my belief that God is all forgiving, which he is. But the question, as I see it, is not ‘has God forgiven me?’ but ‘have I forgiven you?’ and ‘have you forgiven me?’