Project BLACK MAMBA: XXIV Sunday in Ordinary Time

'Tis the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Wikipedia-link.

Scripture of the Week
Mass Readings—Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Book of Sirach, chapter twenty-seven, verse thirty thru chapter twenty-eight, verse seven;
Psalm One Hundred Three, verses one & two, three & four, nine & ten, & eleven & twelve;
The Letter to the Romans, chapter fourteen, verses seven, eight, & nine;
The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter eighteen, verses twenty-one thru thirty-five.

Commentary: Video Gospel reflection by Jeff Cavins: Encountering the Word.

Reflection by Bishop Robert Barron (Word on Fire):

Friends, today's Gospel gives us the parable of the unforgiving servant. I want to say something about the reason for our inability to forgive.

In the deepest sense, we don't belong to ourselves. Everything we have and all that we are comes from God. We are meant, with all of our gifts, to serve God's purposes. Our very existence comes from God, but so does the forgiveness of our sins. If there is one thing that we can each claim of ourselves, it is that we are sinners.

How do we go on? We know that we have been forgiven. That through no merit of ours, Christ has died for our sins and offered us the divine mercy. The upshot is this: there is nothing particularly stable about the self, nothing that it can claim for its own. All that it is has been received as a gift.

Well, what is at the root of the inability to forgive but this false sense of the substantial self? I have things coming to me; Do you know who I am? Well, you have nothing coming to you. You exist because of God and in order to serve the purposes of God.

Video reflection by Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Bible Study—Proverbs in a Month
The Book of Proverbs, chapter seventeen (verses one thru twenty-eight).

Mass Journal: Week 38
Reflection by Matthew Kelly, founder of the Dynamic Catholic Institute:

Yesterday, I was visiting a friend in Atlanta. He lives in a beautiful neighborhood & as we drove past these magnificent homes, one after another, I began to ask myself, "If your spiritual life were a house, what would it be like?" I would like to place the questions before you now. If your spiritual life were a house, what would it be like? What street would it be on? What part of town would it be in? What would it look like? Would it be a house or a home? Is it in need of renovations? It is peaceful, noisy, distracting, well organized, messy?

Otherwise, 17 September would be the festival of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Abbess & Doctor of the Church, O.S.B. (1098-1179): Doctor-link ūna, Doctor-link duae, & Wikipedia-link.

Commentary: Wayback Machine.

'Twould also be the festival of Saint Pedro de Arbués, Priest & Martyr, C.R.S.A. (circa 1441-1485), martyred by Marranos whilst praying in the cathedral of Zaragosa: Martyr-link & Wikipedia-link.

'Twould also be the festival of Saint Robert Bellarmine, Bishop & Doctor of the Church, S.J. (1542-1621): Doctor-link ūnus, Doctor-link duo, & Wikipedia-link.

Commentary: Quoth the Holy Family bulletin:

His most famous work is his three-volume Disputations on the Controversies of the Christian Faith. Particularly noteworthy are the sections on the temporal power of the pope & the roleof the laity. He incurred the anger of monarchists in England & France be showing that divine-right-of-kings theory untenable. He developed the theory of the indirect power of the pope in temporal affairs; although he was defending the pope against the Scottish philosopher Barclay, he was incurred the ire of Pope Sixtus V. Bellarmine was made a cardinal by Pope Clement VIII on the grounds that "he had not his equal for learning."