Homily | August 13, 2026 | The Suitcase Of Resentment | (Episode 230)

Imagine if I walked into church this morning pulling a large suitcase and I placed it here in front of the altar.

Then I preached the entire homily without ever even mentioning the suitcase.

At the end of Mass, every one of you would leave asking the same question, Father, what's up with the suitcase?

Why did you bring it up to the altar?

Well, that's exactly what God tells Ezekiel to do in today's first reading.

Pack your bags, carry them through the city, dig a hole in the wall, walk into the exile while everyone watches.

It's a living homily.

God knew the people had stopped listening to words.

Perhaps they would pay attention to a sign.

Why the suitcase?

Well, because Israel was about to lose everything.

Their sins had become baggage, they could no longer escape, and they would carry that burden into exile.

Now, if we turn to the gospel, Peter asks Jesus, How many times must I forgive?

Peter thinks he's asking about mathematics.

Jesus knows what he's asking.

He's talking about baggage.

Every resentment we refuse to surrender becomes something we carry.

Every grudge becomes another weight.

Every old wound that we replay over and over again becomes another suitcase.

The strange thing about forgiveness is that we think we're making someone else suffer.

But most of the time, we're the ones dragging the luggage.

The other person has probably moved on years ago.

But we are the ones still carrying the burden.

That's why Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiven servant.

The servant owned an unimaginable debt.

In today's money, it would have been impossible to repay a lifetime of money.

Yet the king forgave everything.

Everything.

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.

How could someone who had just been forgiven and forgiven such a large debt be so merciless?

Because although his debt had been removed, his heart had not been changed.

And that may be one of the greatest dangers.

It is possible to receive God's mercy without allowing God's mercy to reshape us.

Every time we come to confession, God says, your debt is forgiven.

Every time we approach this altar, we receive mercy we could never deserve.

So the question is whether that mercy stops with us or does it flow through us?

Forgiveness is not pretending that evil never happened.

It's not saying that justice no longer matters.

It's not denying the pain.

Forgiveness means refusing to let yesterday's wound dictate today's heart.

It means putting down the suitcase.

Perhaps that's why so many people seem spiritually exhausted.

They carry years of resentment, old betrayals, old arguments, old disappointments.

And every day they pick them up again and again and carry them around.

No wonder they have no peace.

No wonder they seem miserable, no joy.

Jesus is standing before us today saying, You don't have to carry that anymore.

Why are you carrying around such a large suitcase?

Leave it here with me.

I carried a cross so you wouldn't have to carry your bitterness forever.

So perhaps today we should ask ourselves one simple question.

What suitcase am I still dragging around behind me?

Whose name immediately comes to my mind when I hear today's gospel?

That may be the very first place where Jesus is inviting us to experience freedom.

Because the person who refuses to forgive remains chained to the past.

But the person who forgives discovers something extraordinary.

The one who is finally set free is not the other person, it is himself.

And that's the miracle Jesus wants to work on in every one of our hearts today.

Amen.