19th Sunday: Almsgiving, forgiveness and purgatory

August 10, 2019

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol (p. 16). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

The Readings for the Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Storing treasures in heaven. Faith is more than just an intellectual proposition; it is the doorway into reality. Jesus linked storing treasures in heaven with the return of the master who will dismember some servants, beat others and set others at table and serve them. What is the connection?

Sin, a financial debt
When we pray the Our Father we say,

“…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

But in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus teaches,

and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt [i] to us, and do not subject us to the final test.” Lk. 11:14 (See also, Mt. 6:12)

We translate ‘debt’ as ‘trespass,’ but Jesus’ listeners would have understood debt analogously, as a financial debt. In fact, the Greek word is opheilêmata (debts). So, the point if you want to read the Gospel of Luke as the Evangelist intended, you must think of sin as a kind of financial debt. Yes, I know, we think about it differently because of 2,000 years of Christianity, but we are dealing with another culture.

Almsgiving and Debt
Jesus teaches the importance of almsgiving and ties it to his Second Coming, the eschatological reality of the end of time or our personal death, whichever comes first.

“Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Lk. 12:32-34

In ancient Israel, almsgiving was a form of sacrifice like offering holocausts of bulls, rams or grain offerings. Giving alms to the poor was linked to the forgiveness of debts that our sins impose on us. Here are some examples:

The Book of Sirach 29:12: store up almsgiving in your treasury
The Book of Tobit 4:7-11: turn your face to the poor and God will turn to you and you will lay up treasure for yourself
The Gospel of Luke 11:41 “Give alms and everything is clean”

Jesus in Luke emphasizes how forgiveness of sin, that is debt, is linked to care for the poor. Almsgiving atones for sins. So, why link the teaching about almsgiving to the end of the world.

The Return of the Master
Jesus then tells a parable about the return of the master. Whenever Jesus talks about the return of the master, he is directing our attention to the end.

“Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. [ii] And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”” Lk. 12:35-40

Jesus refers to himself throughout the Gospels as the bridegroom [iii] and the Kingdom of Heaven as a wedding feast [iv]. As we all know, those celebrations can go late into the night, so the master is probably getting in during the wee hours. Then, he finds his servants and treats them according to how faithful they were.

Reward, debt, punishment and purgatory
In Jesus’ parable, how does the master treat the faithful, the unfaithful and the in-between? When the master returns from the wedding he comes like a thief in the night, that is, no one knows when. Then Peter asks, “Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?” Lk. 12:41. Who is the good and faithful steward? [v], Jesus responds. The Lord uses four examples of a faithful and some not so faithful servants.

First example: “Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of all his property.” This is the reward of heaven. This is our aiming point.
Second example: “But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful.” The “unfaithful” are the unsaved, obviously. The actual word used for “punish the servant severely” refers to ‘dismemberment’. Dismembered, denotes complete destruction. Best to avoid this at all costs.
Third example: That “…servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely;” This example does not involve destruction of the person. Jesus taught that people who should know better will be held accountable.
Fourth example: “… the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly.” Ignorance of God’s will, according to Jesus, results in less severe punishment.

Examples one and two clearly refer to heaven and hell, two eschatological ends that Jesus discusses elsewhere. What are three and four? Well, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus clearly teaches that heaven and hell are not the only two possibilities after death. The word ‘purgatory’ is not used, but the reality is here as an authentic teaching of Jesus. We all ought to do our best to hear the Lord and be faithful to his commands. Almsgiving sounds like a great and happy thing to do!

Almsgiving and the Master’s Return
The master returns at an unknown hour, like a thief in the night. The Book of Wisdom recalls that it was so at the time of the Exodus. God told Moses to have the Israelites gird their loins, as does Jesus, and prepare themselves for the coming of the Angel of Death. Psalm 33 recalls the same reality,

“See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness, To deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine.”

At the Exodus, the Israelites slaughtered lambs and spread the sacrificial blood on the doorposts of their homes to prepare for the Angel of Death’s coming. Almsgiving is the way that we prepare for the coming of the Lord. St. John Chrysostom, the Fourth Century Bishop of Constantinople explained the sacrifice of alms on the altar of the poor and the forgiveness of sins like this,

“You honor this altar indeed, because it receives Christ's body [at the Eucharist]. But the poor man, who is himself the body of Christ, you treat with scorn. … You can see this altar lying around everywhere, both in streets and in market places, and you can sacrifice upon it every hour; for on this too is sacrifice performed.” —St. John Chrysostom, Homily on 2 Corinthians, Anderson, Gary A. Charity (p. 15). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

[i] The following article that appeared in the National Catholic Register is worth reading. I am quoting it in useful part on the translation of debt, sin and trespass. “Languages do not map onto each other in a one-to-one fashion, and translators sometimes must use non-literal translations if they are to make the meaning of a statement clear. In other cases, a non-literal translation can be helpful even if it isn’t strictly required. We see an example of that in Luke’s version of another line of the Lord’s Prayer.
In Matthew’s version (6:12), we find this line:

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

The key word here is “debts,” and there also is no doubt about that use of the word in Greek. The word opheilêmata means “debts” in the financial sense, but it was used in Aramaic as a metaphor for the debt of sin. This figurative meaning was not clear to ordinary Greek speakers, however, and so in Luke’s version of the prayer (11:4) we find:

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

Here, Luke has changed opheilêmata (debts) to hamartias (“sins”) to clarify for ordinary Greek speakers what the meaning is. The New Testament itself thus uses a non-literal translation in a part of the Lord’s Prayer, so there’s nothing wrong with doing so in principle. In fact, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is quite different from Matthew’s version. There were thus at least two different versions of the Lord’s Prayer in use in Greek in the first century. Since both versions were written under divine inspiration, this shows that we don’t all have to use the same version of the prayer. By the way, note that the standard English version of the prayer that Catholics use also contains a non-literal translation of the “debts” line. Our version says: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” “Trespasses” is not literally what it says in Greek, so we English speakers are already using a partly non-literal version of the prayer. From National Catholic Register (online), A 10-Point Primer on the Lord’s Prayer Changes, June 8, 2019.

[ii] When the master returns, he girds himself with the towel and tends to his servants. This is the same image of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper in the Gospel of John. John 13:1-17. This is the image of the eschatological wedding feast.

[iii] Lk. 5:35

[iv] Lk. 14:7-14

[v] And the Lord replied,

“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of all his property.” Lk. 14:15.

Recall that Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to the kingdom and with Isaiah in the background. St. Peter becomes Jesus’ ‘steward.

“ Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood ^* has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Mt. 16:17-19.

The role of the steward ( al bayit) with the keys to the kingdom is discussed in Isaiah 22:22 which is where Jesus draws the image of the Petrine ministry. The king of Israel had a steward that ran his household for him. Jesus as Messianic King of Israel appointed St. Peter as his steward. That is why in this story, Jesus uses the example of a steward in his parable.