Years ago, one of our wise sisters told me, "Be careful about over-tending your wounds. Some people go through life pressing a bruise so that neither they nor (they hope) the world will ever forget it." 

It was quite an image. I could just see myself focusing on a purple mark on my arm, remembering exactly who had bumped up against me and my schemes and thrown my perfect plans out of whack. 

Sister Margaret's advice was a gentler version of Sirach's opening observation: "Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner holds them tight."

What motivates us to cherish wrath? Sirach doesn't say, but he suggests that a remedy is to "remember our last days and set enmity aside." 

Where Sirach the sage gives us clear maxims, Jesus tells a story to confound us from multiple angles.

When Jesus talks about a king and two servants, the story sounds pretty straightforward. One person forgave, another didn't, so the stingy guy loses in the end. Most third graders will get the message. But what if we dig deeper?

First of all, we have the king. He, of course, is omnipotent. He can buy and sell both people and things at will. He calls one of his slaves (that's the literal translation) to "settle accounts." 

Now the slave is in big trouble; he owes the king something on the order of 6,000-10,000 days' worth of wages — that's about 20 years of work. Nobody but another king could come through with that amount. 

When the slave begs, the king spares him and his family from being banished into obscurity. 

What did the king accomplish? He demonstrated and acted with the full extent of his power and authority. The power to erase a debt is even greater than being able to collect on it. As we know from the reaction of the servants, the public saw what he did. 

What did the slave perceive? We might say that he pleaded with the king and got what he asked for. Did he think he had pulled one over on the king? Did he feel ashamed that he had to stoop to begging? Did he feel like he had gotten let off? Did he think the king was stupid? 

All those attitudes are possible at the same time. Even if the slave had conned the king, the entire situation made the vast difference in their power immensely, painfully, obvious. As slave, whether debtor or released, he would always see himself as beholden to the king — as would others. 

In the next act, the tables turn; the absolved debtor has the upper hand over someone who owes him. And what does he do? Having learned nothing about real power, he exposes the puniness of his mind and heart by sending his fellow debtor to prison until the debt is paid — a highly unlikely outcome. 

When others see how things progressed, the original debtor ends up in torture that he brought upon himself.

When we go beneath the surface of the story, we see that even after being relieved of his debt, the first slave chose to live in a world of oppression and domination. Although the king's forgiveness had created an alternative to strict economic justice or tit-for-tat relationships, the slave rejected that option. 

Given the opportunity to increase the bounteousness in the world, he instead supported a caste system that offered him petty superiority. By reinforcing a strictly transactional system and the power of domination, he ultimately became his own torturer. 

As Sirach warned, he held tight to terrible things: there would always be someone over him and that would always torment him. 

What can we take from this in September 2023? In the middle of the Season of Creation (Sept. 1-Oct. 4), we might read this parable from the vantage point of being creatures given an undeserved bounty of life and possibility. None of us has done anything to deserve the life we have, it is a pure gift of God — to us and to every other part of creation. 

What does this suggest about the relationships we create with the rest of God's creation? 

Sirach talked about cherishing wrath. That seems to be the direct route to self-inflicted torment. How about the alternative of cherishing gratitude? 

Instead of pressing the bruise, we might marvel out our bodies' remarkable powers of regeneration and healing. Before we call in any debts, we might take account of what we have been given, beginning with life itself, and then all the unmerited advantages of our time and place in history. 

God's creation is lavish. We can be, too.

On September 22, 2021, Stephen Colbert and six other late-night TV hosts featured climate change in their programs. Among other things, Colbert admitted, "I'm a great hypocrite. I'll never do anything that's inconvenient to me. That's why there has to be systemic change, to make everyone make the right choices, not the easy ones." 

It's not often that comedians sound like they just read a papal document, but that night, entertainers were all but citing Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home."

Today, we hear God tell Ezekiel to be a "watchman" for Israel. Now, watchmen are supposed to guard those who hire them, but God commissioned this watchman to disturb his clientele. Who but God would think of that? (It doesn't bode well for long-term employment!)

God tells Ezekiel that if he doesn't speak out, he'll be responsible for all the wickedness that he lets pass him by. Now that's a heavy burden. Ezekiel's only option is to do like the comedians and warn folks that their behavior is pressing down the accelerator on their impending doom.

Growing up, Jesus surely learned about Ezekiel and his thankless vocation. Perhaps he meditated on Ezekiel's task as he went about whatever kept him busy before he began his public mission. 

However he came to it, Jesus took the prophetic call to heart and he figured out how to pull it off with memorable humor.

Today's teaching about fraternal correction concludes a series of Jesus' wild and witty ideas (Matthew 18:1-14). After telling the disciples that the humble are the greatest in God's sight, Jesus launched into exaggeration and wordplay. 

He suggested that it would be better to drown with a 200-pound millstone necklace than to set a stumbling block before the simple. As if that weren't enough, he asserted that people should cut off their hands or pluck out their eyes rather than let those body parts lead them to sin. 

Then, while everyone was laughing (nervously) at his absurd images, he hit them with a serious challenge: "If your brother sins ..." In other words: "You are responsible for one another and must do everything possible to help others find their way."

What did folks think upon hearing that? Suppose the listener were someone without much social status, perhaps a woman? To what does Jesus call her? 

First, he suggests that she be a whistleblower, telling perpetrators how she views their behavior. 

If she gets no results, she's supposed to risk sharing her assessment with others — perhaps people with greater social status. This step entails the chance that they could dismiss her or decide that the cost of saying something is too great. 

Still, by the grace of God, they might agree and join her crusade. 

What would lead others to join with her? They, like she, would need a twofold motivation. First, they would need to perceive the wrong in the situation. Secondly, they would need the commitment and hope to believe that something better is possible.

Note: Jesus is not proposing a law-and-order solution. There's no mention of punishment here. It's all aimed at a conversion of mind and heart — including the humbling possibility that the confronter herself might change her viewpoint. 

It is also an innately communal activity. If the whistleblower and the perpetrator do not agree, a larger group is responsible to discern and speak out. Finally, if no agreement comes from that, the community simply accepts the fact that the "perpetrator" cannot change enough to be in communion with them. 

There's no winner or loser, but there is a clarification of values. The ones who see something wrong must continue to practice their convictions — whether or not it is convenient and whether or not others agree with them.

Today? As we enter into the Season of Creation, public figures, including Colbert and Francis, call our attention to climate change as "one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day," in the words of Laudato Si'. We even recognize it as the primary pro-life issue of our time. 

Like Ezekiel the disturber, Francis reminds us in Laudato Si', "As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted to think that what is happening is not entirely clear," but "this is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them ... delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen."

In this second week of the 2023 Season of Creation, we are called to take up our vocation as creation's caretakers without delay. Like someone who calls out an offender, we must disturb the peace and implement real systemic change. It's either that or usher in the impending doom.

If today you hear God's voice, harden not your hearts!