SPEAKER_00: Imagine if I walked into church this morning pulling a large suitcase and I placed it here in front of the altar.
SPEAKER_00: Then I preached the entire homily without ever even mentioning the suitcase.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of Mass, every one of you would leave asking the same question, Father, what's up with the suitcase?
SPEAKER_00: Why did you bring it up to the altar?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's exactly what God tells Ezekiel to do in today's first reading.
SPEAKER_00: Pack your bags, carry them through the city, dig a hole in the wall, walk into the exile while everyone watches.
SPEAKER_00: It's a living homily.
SPEAKER_00: God knew the people had stopped listening to words.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps they would pay attention to a sign.
SPEAKER_00: Why the suitcase?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because Israel was about to lose everything.
SPEAKER_00: Their sins had become baggage, they could no longer escape, and they would carry that burden into exile.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we turn to the gospel, Peter asks Jesus, How many times must I forgive?
SPEAKER_00: Peter thinks he's asking about mathematics.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows what he's asking.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about baggage.
SPEAKER_00: Every resentment we refuse to surrender becomes something we carry.
SPEAKER_00: Every grudge becomes another weight.
SPEAKER_00: Every old wound that we replay over and over again becomes another suitcase.
SPEAKER_00: The strange thing about forgiveness is that we think we're making someone else suffer.
SPEAKER_00: But most of the time, we're the ones dragging the luggage.
SPEAKER_00: The other person has probably moved on years ago.
SPEAKER_00: But we are the ones still carrying the burden.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiven servant.
SPEAKER_00: The servant owned an unimaginable debt.
SPEAKER_00: In today's money, it would have been impossible to repay a lifetime of money.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the king forgave everything.
SPEAKER_00: Everything.
SPEAKER_00: Then the same servant walked outside, found someone who owed him some money, almost nothing by comparison, grabs him by the throat and demands payment.
SPEAKER_00: How could someone who had just been forgiven and forgiven such a large debt be so merciless?
SPEAKER_00: Because although his debt had been removed, his heart had not been changed.
SPEAKER_00: And that may be one of the greatest dangers.
SPEAKER_00: It is possible to receive God's mercy without allowing God's mercy to reshape us.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we come to confession, God says, your debt is forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we approach this altar, we receive mercy we could never deserve.
SPEAKER_00: So the question is whether that mercy stops with us or does it flow through us?
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness is not pretending that evil never happened.
SPEAKER_00: It's not saying that justice no longer matters.
SPEAKER_00: It's not denying the pain.
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness means refusing to let yesterday's wound dictate today's heart.
SPEAKER_00: It means putting down the suitcase.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that's why so many people seem spiritually exhausted.
SPEAKER_00: They carry years of resentment, old betrayals, old arguments, old disappointments.
SPEAKER_00: And every day they pick them up again and again and carry them around.
SPEAKER_00: No wonder they have no peace.
SPEAKER_00: No wonder they seem miserable, no joy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is standing before us today saying, You don't have to carry that anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Why are you carrying around such a large suitcase?
SPEAKER_00: Leave it here with me.
SPEAKER_00: I carried a cross so you wouldn't have to carry your bitterness forever.
SPEAKER_00: So perhaps today we should ask ourselves one simple question.
SPEAKER_00: What suitcase am I still dragging around behind me?
SPEAKER_00: Whose name immediately comes to my mind when I hear today's gospel?
SPEAKER_00: That may be the very first place where Jesus is inviting us to experience freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Because the person who refuses to forgive remains chained to the past.
SPEAKER_00: But the person who forgives discovers something extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00: The one who is finally set free is not the other person, it is himself.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the miracle Jesus wants to work on in every one of our hearts today.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.