(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/BIC-Mass-Blog-for-theSeventeenth-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time.mp3)
A good editor could have distilled Sunday’s first reading from Genesis down to a paragraph. This is the account of Abraham trying to talk God out of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of innocents who might be destroyed along with the guilty (Genesis 18:20-32). “Please, Lord, what if there are ten innocents there?” Boom. God spares them. Next chapter.
But no, we have to sit through Abraham talking God down from 50, to 45, to 40, to 30, to 20, THEN to ten innocent people.
Why do we have to endure paragraph after paragraph of Abraham begging for patience as he keeps lowering the bar of human innocence? Is he trying to wear God down or is he helping each of us imagine being among the precious few innocents who might have merited God’s mercy?
By the end of this reading we hear God say, for all intents and purposes, “Alright already! For the sake of those ten, I won’t destroy humanity!”
Imagine listening to a football game on the radio. When a fullback breaks free from the opponent’s defensive linemen and heads toward their end zone, the announcer helps us envision the impending result: “He’s to the 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10—TOUCHDOWN!!”
How exciting! We can’t see that touchdown on radio, but in our heart we’re one with that player as he gets closer to an achievement his team will share. Could it have been God’s will all along that humanity’s collective survival would be based on the achievement of only one champion among us? Could it be that one perfect player is IN all of us? Could it be Christ is that one innocent savior?
As Paul tells us this Sunday (Colossians 2:12-14), we share in God’s forgiveness through the one who died for us, and raised us up with him via our faith that our guilt was also nailed to that cross with him. That faith is still fed by the simple and short prayer Jesus knew our short attention spans could tolerate: “forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.” (Luke 11:1-13)
Thanks to that one innocent who won forgiveness for all, all were saved from taking that final exam.
In his first homily as Pope, Leo XIV distilled that concept down to its essence with the help of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who, after writing seven epistles based on the wisdom the Holy Spirit gave him, and before the Romans fed him to the lions for it, said: “Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world no longer sees my body.”
The message Leo was giving fellow shepherds and all lost sheep with that account: “move aside so that Christ may remain” and “make yourselves small so that he may be known.”
Thanks to that one innocent human whom the lions of our Sodom and Gomorrah world couldn’t make disappear, we can see, know, love and serve God in and among each other. Faith in Our Father is distilled down to that.
–Tom Andel
It is the great mystery of salvation that is often overlooked–how the most innocent of all very intentionally gave the ultimate example of forgiveness. It was his choice to do it this way for the God-man could do whatever he wanted to, yet he chose this path.
Forgiveness is one of our greatest challenges as our pride intercepts the noble example given by our Lord and limits our ability to follow suit. How sad but true.
The example in the link below is one of the best I’ve heard on the virtue of forgiveness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOPlnz_iBqo
Thank you for posting that link, Thomas. Forgiveness IS a cross for many of us. We can imagine how the Dracula of fiction felt when looking at a crucifix–the very real symbol of the forgiveness that killed our sin. Forgiveness is an almost unbearable burden for humans to bear because hating someone who wronged us feels better than any luxury we can imagine. Christ forces us to look at his sacrifice and make it ours. If we can, we rise from the undead to eternal life.