Today is the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, and we are in green. Because November 2 falls on a Sunday this year, this second-class Sunday takes precedence and the Commemoration of All Souls moves to tomorrow. So today is not yet the day of the dead. Today is the day of the accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One more thing before we begin. You do not have to believe anything in particular for the next half hour to be worth your time. If you have ever asked another person for time you could not promise to use well, you already know exactly what have patience with me<\/strong> costs to say out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (The Confiteor and Kyrie are said here, from the Missal.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We begin the way the Church has always begun\u2014not with achievement, but with an honest accounting. Notice where it sits: before the Gloria, before the readings, before anything at all is asked of us. Each of us names what we have done and left undone, in the plainest words available, and nobody is required to itemize it aloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take the pause. For anyone who has been made to confess in front of an audience as a condition of belonging, that is not what this is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (The Gloria is sung or said here, from the Missal.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, straight after the honesty, praise. That order never changes and it is not a reward for having been good. It is simply what comes next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Esther 13:9-11; Ps. 118:1)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n All things are in thy power, O Lord, and there is none that can resist thy will; thou hast made heaven and earth, and all things that are under the cope of heaven. Thou art Lord of all. \u2123. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keep Thy household, we beseech Thee, O Lord, in continual godliness; that under Thy protection it may be free from all adversities, and devoted in good works to the glory of Thy name. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ephesians 6:10-17<\/a>, Douay-Rheims<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Brethren: Finally, be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of his power. Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Ps. 89:1-2)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Lord, thou hast been our refuge from generation to generation. \u2123. Before the mountains were made, or the earth and the world was formed; from eternity and to eternity thou art God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Ps. 113:1)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alleluia, alleluia. \u2123. When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people. Alleluia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matthew 18:23-35<\/a>, Douay-Rheims<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At that time, Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: “Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened to a king, who would take an account of his servants. And when he had begun to take the account, one was brought to him, that owed him ten thousand talents. And as he had not wherewith to pay it, his lord commanded that he should be sold, and his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n “But that servant falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n “But when that servant was gone out, he found one of his fellow servants that owed him an hundred pence: and laying hold of him, throttled him, saying: Pay what thou owest. And his fellow servant falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he paid the debt.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Now his fellow servants seeing what was done, were very much grieved, and they came and told their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him; and said to him: Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all the debt, because thou besoughtest me: shouldst not thou then have had compassion also on thy fellow servant, even as I had compassion on thee?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n “And his lord being angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt. So also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (The Nicene Creed is said here, from the Missal.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We say it together and out loud, in the same words and at the same speed, whatever each of us is privately able to mean by it this morning. Some of you will say every line of it as fact. Some of you will say it the way you would carry a friend’s bag. Both of you are saying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ten thousand talents is not a debt. It is a joke about a debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A talent ran to something near fifteen or twenty years of a labourer’s wages. Ten thousand of them is a number chosen because it cannot be pictured, let alone repaid, and Christ picks it deliberately. Against that figure the servant opens his mouth and says the only thing left to say: have patience with me<\/strong>, and I will pay thee all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at what he is actually asking for. He is not asking to be forgiven. He is asking for an extension. Have patience with me<\/strong> is a request for time, and it arrives with a promise fastened to it that both men in the room know is worthless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will pay thee all.<\/em> He will not. He cannot. He is buying an afternoon, and have patience with me<\/strong> is the whole price of the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here is the hinge of the parable: he does not get what he asks for. The master is moved with pity, and the master does not grant patience. He releases the debt. He said have patience with me<\/strong> and was answered with something that made the sentence unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The servant asked for a longer rope and was handed a torn page. That is not the same thing, and everything that goes wrong afterwards goes wrong because he never quite noticed the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He walks out into the yard still thinking in instalments. He finds a man who owes him a hundred pence, which is real money and payable money, roughly a hundred days’ wages. He takes him by the throat. And the man on the ground says, in the identical words the first man used an hour earlier, have patience with me<\/strong>, and I will pay thee all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same four words. The same worthless promise fastened to the end of them. Have patience with me<\/strong>, spoken a second time, in the same order, in the same yard, inside the hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He does not recognize the sentence. That is the sin. Not the debt collection, not even the throttling, but the failure to know his own voice coming out of another man’s mouth. Have patience with me<\/strong> came back to him in his own cadence and he heard a stranger. Christ makes the two speeches match word for word so that nobody can miss it, and the servant misses it anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to be careful before calling him a monster, because the mechanism is far too familiar for that. He had asked for time. Time is what you extend to people who look like good bets, and release is what you extend to people who do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having been treated as the second kind while still hearing himself as the first, he met a genuine long shot and did what people do with long shots. Have patience with me<\/strong> sounds like a bad risk the moment you have decided the world runs on terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have patience with me<\/strong> is the most reasonable request in the parable and it is also the smallest one. Have patience with me<\/strong> is what you ask for when you still believe the relationship is a transaction and you are hoping for better terms. The master’s answer refuses the terms entirely. And the servant, handed a world without terms, went straight back out and started keeping accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then set today’s Epistle beside that. Paul tells us to put on the armour of God, and the reason he gives is that our wrestling is not against flesh and blood.<\/em> Against principalities. Against powers. Against the rulers of the world of this darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It sounds enormous, and it has been used for centuries to point at everything except the yard outside the counting house, where one man is on his knees saying have patience with me<\/strong> to another man who was on his knees an hour ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But look at where the harm comes from in the Gospel. No principality throttled that man. Another servant did, one who had been released from an unpayable sum ninety minutes earlier. If you were hunting for a fiery dart of the most wicked one, there it is, and it looks exactly like a reasonable man enforcing a legitimate claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is why Paul’s list is almost entirely defensive. Truth around the waist, justice across the chest, peace on the feet, faith in the hand, salvation on the head. Six pieces of gear and only one of them can be swung, and even that one is not a weapon we invent, it is the word of God. Nothing in the kit is for collecting a debt from a man saying have patience with me<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when someone at that table says have patience with me<\/strong>, the armour is not for winning the exchange. It is for staying on your feet while you lose it on purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the hard part, and I am not going to walk around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This parable gets used as a threat. The last verse is read aloud to people who have been genuinely and criminally harmed, and turned into an instruction: forgive your brother from your heart or God will hand you to the torturers. Survivors of abuse hear this from pulpits, in counselling rooms, and at kitchen tables, and they hear it precisely at the moment they are trying to get free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The message lands as your safety is the debt you owe.<\/em> It tells them that have patience with me<\/strong> is a sentence they are obliged to accept from the person who broke them, on demand, for as long as he keeps saying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Test that reading against the text itself. The debt in this parable is one the servant is owed and could release with a word. He is the creditor. Everything Christ says about him concerns a claim he holds and will not let go of, and there is not one line here addressed to a person who was harmed and is being told to absolve the one who harmed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And notice what the released servant was not required to do. He was not sent back to work for the master on the same terms. He was not required to say the debt had never existed, or that the ten thousand talents were a misunderstanding, or that he now felt warmly about the whole episode. The debt was cancelled. Nothing was pretended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forgiveness in this parable is the letting go of a claim. It is not reconciliation, it is not access, it is not proximity, and it is not amnesia. You can release a claim on someone and still decline to be in the room the next time he says have patience with me<\/strong>, and you will not find a syllable in Matthew 18 that says otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone who tells a survivor that the forgiven servant owed his master a relationship is adding a clause Christ did not write. Apply the fruit-test, which is the only test I trust. A teaching that hears have patience with me<\/strong> as a summons back into danger produces people who are recaptured; a teaching that hears it as let go of what you are owed and keep your feet<\/em> produces people who walk out of the counting house with nothing in their hands and nothing at their throat. Judge the two by what they grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a story sometimes told of two brothers and a funeral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The older one paid for their mother’s burial because the younger one could not, and because there was no time to argue about it. Afterwards, being a careful man and hurt in a way he could not name, he wrote out what he had spent, had his brother sign it, and put the paper in the hallway drawer. The younger brother meant to pay. Then a bad year came, and another, and the two of them stopped speaking, and the not-speaking lasted nineteen years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paper stayed in the drawer by the front door, where the older brother passed it every morning on his way out. He did not need to open it. He knew the figure. What he did not notice for nineteen years was that his brother had said have patience with me<\/strong> to him, in almost exactly those words, in the week after the funeral, and that he had said no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He had never once thought of that no as a decision. He had not refused a monster. He had refused have patience with me<\/strong>, which is a far easier thing to refuse and a far harder thing to remember refusing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The way the story is told, he took the paper out on the morning of his own diagnosis and could not remember what the money had been for. Not the amount. The purpose. He tore it into quarters in the hallway and sat down on the stairs, and what he said afterwards was that he had assumed all along he was the one holding the door shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He had been on the inside of it too. I tell it because family estrangement almost never begins with a monstrous act. It begins with a reasonable person declining to release a legitimate claim, and then time does the rest of the work for free. Somebody said have patience with me<\/strong> at the wrong moment and got a perfectly defensible answer, and nineteen years is what a perfectly defensible answer costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then look at what the Church puts in front of us at the offertory, of all places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today’s Offertory antiphon is not about debt at all. It is <a href=”https:\/\/drbo.org\/chapter\/20001.htm?utm_source=bloomministries.org” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Job<\/a>, named out loud, simple and upright and fearing God, stripped of his substance and his children and wounded in his flesh. On a Sunday about a man who owed ten thousand talents, the liturgy walks up to the altar carrying the one man in scripture who owed nothing whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is a deliberate refusal, and one of the kindest things the missal does all year. It means the day’s parable about debt cannot be turned around and used to read your suffering as a bill coming due. Job owed nobody a penny and never once had to say have patience with me<\/strong> to anyone. His losses are not a repayment schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are sick, if you are poor, if you have buried someone this year, this Mass will not let anyone tell you it is the interest on something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yesterday we kept All Saints and heard Christ say that the merciful obtain mercy<\/a>. Today we are shown the same coin from its other face: what it looks like when mercy is obtained and then not handed on to the next man saying have patience with me<\/strong>. The Beatitude is not a trade and the parable is not a threat. They are one description, given twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here is what I would ask you to carry out of here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somebody is going to say have patience with me<\/strong> to you this week, and they will almost certainly not use those words. It will sound like a text answered four days late. A rent payment short again. A friend who cancels twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A sibling who says the wrong thing at the wrong volume, because saying the right thing would cost more than they have. Have patience with me<\/strong> is nearly always disguised as an inconvenience, and that is exactly why it goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you will have a legitimate claim. That is the part the parable insists on. The hundred pence was real, the debt was genuine, and the man had every right to collect. Christ never disputes the claim. He only asks whether you recognize have patience with me<\/strong> when it is aimed at you instead of coming out of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because you have said it. In a hospital corridor, in a bad job, at nineteen, in a room you could not afford. Every one of us has stood in front of someone holding an unpayable figure and asked them to have patience with me<\/strong>, and meant please do not make this the end of me.<\/em> If that was ever granted to you, you know what it purchased. It purchased the rest of your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Collect this morning asks God to keep the household free from adversities and devoted to good works. Household, not individual. A household is a place where nobody is quietly holding a signed paper on anybody else, and where nobody has to say have patience with me<\/strong> twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tear the page. Do not extend the terms, do not add a clause about relationship or access or how warmly you must feel, and do not wait until you can no longer remember what the money was for. Just tear it, and go and stand somewhere in your armour, and let somebody say have patience with me<\/strong> to you today and get more than they asked for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Job 1:1)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a man in the land of Hus, whose name was Job, simple and upright, and fearing God: whom Satan besought that he might tempt; and power was given him from the Lord over his possessions and his flesh. And he destroyed all his substance and his children, and wounded his flesh also with a grievous ulcer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Receive favourably, O Lord, these offerings, whereby Thou hast willed to be appeased, and by Thy mighty love to restore salvation unto us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (The Preface of the Most Holy Trinity, the Sanctus, and the Canon through the Consecration are prayed here, from the Missal, and the Consecration made within Bloom’s own Independent Catholic tradition.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We come to the part of the Mass that is not a lesson. The Church stops explaining here and simply does what it was given to do, in words it has used for centuries, offered as a real celebration within our own tradition and not a claim on anyone else’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever you brought in with you this morning\u2014the figure you have not said out loud, the person you are carrying, the paper still in your drawer\u2014put it on the altar now. Notice the shape of what happens here: something is given away in order to be given back. It is the same shape as the master’s answer to the man who said have patience with me<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No livestream can hand anyone a host. That is true of every Mass offered over video, anywhere, by anyone. So the Church’s own long-standing practice stands in, the same one Roman bishops recommended to their parishes watching from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My Jesus, I believe that Thou art truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament. I love Thee above all things and I desire to receive Thee into my soul. Since I cannot now receive Thee sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace Thee as if Thou wert already there, and unite myself wholly to Thee. Never permit me to be separated from Thee. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you cannot say that this morning, sit quietly through it. This is have patience with me<\/strong> turned the other way round, and it is the one place the sentence is always answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Ps. 118:81, 84, 86)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n My soul hath fainted after thy salvation: and in thy word I have very much hoped. When wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me? They have persecuted me unjustly: do thou help me, O Lord my God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hear what the Church put in your ear on the way out. The antiphon is not the creditor’s voice. It is the voice of somebody still waiting, still owed, still hoping in a word rather than in a settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having received the food of immortality, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that what we have taken with our mouth we may follow after with a pure mind. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Given as Bloom’s own pastor, within Bloom’s own tradition)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Go now, and go light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you believe this morning: the debt that could not be counted has already been torn, and it was torn before you thought to ask for an extension. The mercy you are asked to hand on is not yours to generate. It has been in your hands since before you walked in here, and God, who has been <a href=”https:\/\/drbo.org\/chapter\/21089.htm?utm_source=bloomministries.org” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>our refuge from generation to generation<\/a>, will not run short of it while you practise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you believe none of it, the same thing holds without a word of the theology. You are alive because people gave you more time than your record justified. You owe that forward, not back, and not only to the ones who gave it. Somebody will ask you today, in whatever words they can manage, have patience with me<\/strong>. Give them better than patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May God keep this household in continual godliness, free from all adversities, and devoted in good works. And may you be recognized when you next need to say it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go, and tear the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Penitential Rite<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Gloria<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Introit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Collect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Epistle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gradual<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Alleluia<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gospel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Creed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Offering<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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What Paul is actually arming us against<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The teaching this parable gets used for, and why it will not hold<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Two brothers and a folded paper<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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What the liturgy does with your suffering today<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Where this leaves us<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Offertory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Secret<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Canon and Consecration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Act of Spiritual Communion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Communion Antiphon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Postcommunion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Closing Blessing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nFrequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n