Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time-A
Peter said, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” The enormous number Jesus uses drives home the point that Christianity is synonymous with being forgiving.
After laying the foundation for forgiveness, Jesus follows with a parable about a king settling his accounts with his servants. A debtor owed a huge amount and couldn’t repay it. The king ordered his wife, children, and property to be sold to pay the debt. In response, the servant begged the king to be patient with him. Moved by compassion, the king forgave his loan. The mercy and forgiveness of the king are just the beginning of the story.
The forgiven servant, now emancipated from his financial burden, came across another person who owed him money. The same dynamic occurred. The debtor pleaded for mercy and forgiveness, but it fell on deaf ears. Instead, he had the man thrown into prison until he paid back the full amount. Word came back to the king, who was furious and asked why he could not show the mercy he had been shown. Then the man was tortured until he paid back his debt. Strikingly, Jesus says his heavenly Father will do the same unless we forgive our neighbor from the heart.
The obvious lesson Jesus wants to teach us is that unless we forgive our brother and sister from the heart, we cannot expect God to forgive us for our trespasses. This teaching dates back to early antiquity. In the first reading from Sirach, long before Jesus’ time, the theme is stated unambiguously. “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the LORD’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail. Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.”
For many, the teaching on forgiveness does not account for the nuances of human conflict. People hurt one another, and the pain and betrayal feel real. Sometimes it’s hard to get past those feelings, and over time, they metastasize with each passing day. So, forgiving someone who doesn’t care about our well-being may be asking too much, even if we take to heart the message that God will forgive us only if we forgive our neighbor.
Believe it or not, the Catechism raises and answers this dynamic. “It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.” Unless we forgive from our heart, we cannot expect to be forgiven by our heavenly Father.
We have now come to the crux of the matter and why it is so difficult to forgive. There is little argument that desiring God’s forgiveness means we have to forgive our neighbor. Every time we pray the ‘Our Father,’ we ask God to forgive our trespasses while forgiving those who have trespassed against us. Forgiveness is in Christians’ DNA. Then why is it so hard in praxis?
The reason is quite simple. Holding a grudge against our neighbor is fueled by the incorrect assumption that, as the perceived victim, we have forgotten that we too have hurt others and need forgiveness. If we convince ourselves that we are righteous and don’t need forgiveness, the whole teaching collapses because it doesn’t apply to us. The stance and reasoning of not needing forgiveness must be purified, because no one is so righteous as to believe God’s forgiveness doesn’t apply.
Recall often the words of Jesus. “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Only after we take Jesus’ words and apply them to ourselves can we begin to be a forgiving person, open to God’s mercy, as a sinner.