NOTES for Luk 16:15-18

There is an astonishing quality in the Good News brought by Christ. On the one hand, the Law stands within it with unassailable strength, firmness, and holiness. “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of the law to drop out,” says today's Gospel reading. On the other hand, the person who breaks it is forgiven - and forgiven not only by God. The Lord also calls us to become like Him in this universal forgiveness: “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” Possessing only a human mind, we find it very difficult to grasp the infinite distance between these features of Christ's proclamation. If we establish ourselves in some principle as firmly as the Law stands, we seek to remove, destroy, and suppress everything that does not fit that principle, everything that contradicts it. We are not given to understand this difficult spiritual duality, in which the Law exists and the one who has broken it is forgiven. At other times, however, we become so accustomed to the idea of God's mercy that we cease to marvel at the miracle and the seeming unnaturalness of such a duality. In that case, the Lord will always find a way to renew our trust.