A Great
Debt of Gratitude
(see Mt 18:15-20)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Saint Paul, in the Second Reading,
taken from the Letter to the Romans, gives us Christians his morally profound
advice that we should owe nobody anything except a great debt of gratitude.
We, as children, owe our parents a
great debt of gratitude for the gift of life.
This is a happy life in a loving and caring family. It is in this family that we have grown up and
become fully human, fully conscious of our dignity as human persons, enjoying
our rights and duties.
The most significant among human
rights is the right to religious freedom, freedom to worship God, our Creator
and Savior. The worship of God is the
very human act of profound gratitude to the Father in heaven Who made us in His
image and Who saved us from sin and death by sending Jesus Christ His Beloved
Son to suffer and die on the Cross and rise to life again.
Our duties mean that we are
responsible for what we owe to God, to our friends and to society. We are duty-bound to render the best service
of God, of family and of society. We
should be committed citizens in the building of the kingdom of the earth,
making it a clean and green home for the human family to live in. We should also be active builders of the
kingdom of heaven where all peoples come and sing praises to God for ever for
His great merciful love.
We are also duty-bound to help one
another in living up to our Christian moral life. This duty consists of the two missions:
first, the proclamation of Gospel-based values of which love is the heart and
the soul; and second, the denunciation of all forms of violation of these
values.
“Charity begins from home”, this means
that we are charity-bound to proclaim Gospel-based values to our sisters and
brothers, and to denounce wrongdoings that happen in our Christian family and
community.
Correction of sisters and brothers who
have done something wrong should not be merely angry or vindictive reactions,
but it should on the contrary be an act of good intention to bring the wayward
members back to God, and to the community.
Even when we have failed in our
efforts to help our sisters and brothers to admit their wrongs and to repent of
their sins, we should not cease praying for them and entrust them to the merciful
love of God.
We just try to do our best and let the
Lord God do the rest. Amen.
Fr. Francis Nguyen Van Nhut, O.P.
