Ecclesiasticus as Christian Scripture
After all these years, for the first time, it struck me to ask why Ecclesiasticus is called Sirach. Having been a minister of the Word for thirty years, it is a shame for me not to have known this, nor enquired about it before. Perhaps, a good many of my fellow priests would not know. I don't think there was any such discussion in our Theology or Scripture courses.
I learn that while the Catholic canon proclaims it as part of scriptural revelation (1546 - under the threat of excommunication! Funny people wielding the sword of excommunication to coerce people into believing the strange faith theories put forward by very imaginative minds!!), the Jewish canon or many of the Christian denominations do not consider them part of the scriptural revelation - they are treated as 'apocrypha' - implying their authenticity is in doubt.
Now 'Sirach' is attributed to the author 'Joshua (Jesus) ben Sirach' (Joshua the Son of Sirach), on instruction by his father Sirach, in Hebrew, on the instruction by his father, sometime between BCE 200 and 175. The book is given an introduction (prologue) by Sirach the son of Joshua around BCE 132.
Having been widely used by the early Church and Church fathers as a moral instruction, it came to be known as liber Ecclesiasticus (Church Book), and later on, as Ecclesiasticus, which means 'of the Church'. While considered the largest book in the genre of Biblical wisdom literature, it has the unique feature of reference to all the books of the Old Testament, barring, Ezra, Daniel, Ruth, Esther, and Chronicles, thus serving as a historical document pointing to the formation of these Biblical texts.
Forgiveness as Wisdom - Sep. 17, 2023 Sunday
On this Sunday, I was fascinated by the wisdom of Sirach, in presenting the significance of forgiveness (27:33-28:9). What a powerful thinking on anger management 2000 years ago. It shows a position that Jesus himself would advocate - forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you, and when you pray, your sins will be forgiven. It speaks about making oneself free from anger, resentment, hate and ill-will, and practise forgiveness, compassion and pity so that forgiveness and pity from the Lord is received.
And when it comes to gospel, Mathew (18:32-37) presents Jesus stating almost the same position regarding forgiveness.
Now given to using the ' outcome-based education (OBE) framework', I was immediately led to think on such terms linking Christian faith formation and related outcomes. What could be the outcomes by which we could say that Christian faith is effective and what could be its indicators?
Christians faith can be said to be effective when someone professing to be a Christian is able to:
1. forgive one's wrong-doers, the fact of dislike or feeling wronged, or memory of the hurt notwithstanding! It is a Christian faith choice, a conscious decision to 'forgive'. So the saying 'forgive and forget' need not go together, though, if we are blessed with the ability to 'forget' the hurt, it is easier to forgive.
2. it invariably implies that the aggrieved party is able to place the wrong-doer before God, the ultimate source of good, in prayer, deliberately seeking his/her well being.
3. it would involve that in spite of the hurt, s/he will avoid speaking ill of the person
4. it could mean, deliberately trying to find good in the person who wronged you, and/or when opportunity beckons, would speak well of her/him.
5. it could also extend to offering possible good when an opportunity presents itself or, even to the extent of being on the lookout for doing good to him or her, as would be expected by Christ: 'do good to those who hate you' (Lk 6:27-28).
Thus forgiveness becomes a means for ensuring peace for you, and peace on earth, and thus becoming God's children (Mtt 5:8). As would Rudyard Kipling assert as a quality of being a (hu)man: ...If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, yours is the earth and all that is in it, And, which is more, you will be a man my son!
While we are asked to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect (Mt 5:48), this is one case Jesus presents when the Father is asked to imitate us, or makes the Father's action conditional upon our action: forgive us as we have forgiven our offenders (Mtt 7: )
It is one step we take towards making creating heaven, God's reign on earth, a step by which people are really converted to goodness. On the other hand, not forgiving or seeking vengeance is one step in the direction of creating or perpetrating hell for and around us. Call to forgiveness is an invitation to liberation from a great slavery!
In my own lifetime, I have the examples of St. Pope John Paul II forgiving Mehmet Ali Agca (1981), Australian evangelical missionary Gladys Stains, who forgave the killers of her missionary husband Graham Stains and their two children (January 22, 1999, in Mayur Banj, Odisha, Bajrang Dal activists under Dara Singh's leadership) and thus rose to be a vibrant Christian witness in India (seen next to Mother Teresa), the family of Blessed Rani Maria FCC (whom I had the good fortune to be acquainted with), who forgave the hit man Samundar Singh who brutally murdered her for having stood with the exploited poor of the Indore region in Madhya Pradesh state of India. In all these cases, the wrong doer(s) was said to have been touched, and converted to goodness.
There is a great need for forgiveness today, and Christian challenge everywhere is whether as individuals and as a community are we able to inspire this.
Let us pray that divided and conflict-ridden families and nations - people of Sudan, Christian majority Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Ukraine - Russia may be touched by the great grace of forgiveness.
We find in Jesus' parable as told by Luke the forgiving father. Interestingly, in Indian tradition, the planet earth is a goddess and a space permeated with God - ishavaashyamidam sarvam, and is named kshama which means forbearance/patience and implies forgiveness. In my mother tongue, there is a saying, 'being patient like the earth or down to the earth' (bhoomiyolam kshamikkuka). The planet bears with human beings and their erratic behaviour almost always, however, it has limits of a creature, and hence we find, it losing its limits in natural cataclysms, pathogens getting unleashed. But Jesus points to a picutre of God, drastically different from the old testament God, willing to forgive, and makes that part of his 'perfection' which humans are called to grow into.
May God, the forgiving father and mother of us all, give us a share of the infinite goodness to forgive, and to heal humanity, heal the planet!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Sirach
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