TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2023)
Readings:
Sirach 27:30-28:7
Psalms 103:1-4, 9-12
Romans 14:7-9
Matthew 18:21-35
Love and forgiveness are intimately intertwined in Jesus’ teaching. There is no separating the two virtues, as today’s gospel passage points out. Further, the quintessential Christian prayer taught to us by Jesus Himself reminds us: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Immediately after the Lord’s Prayer Jesus previews today’s parable by stating: “If you forgive others their transgression, your Heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
The first reading from the Book of Sirach highlights why forgiveness can be such a difficult thing: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner holds them tight.” If we are honest with ourselves we recognize how true this is. The saying “forgive, and forget” is so ludicrously simplistic, for if we could truly ‘forget’ the the wrong that has been levied on us it would be easy to ‘forgive.’ Commensurate with the gravity of the wrong done to us is the enormity of the challenge to forgive. Yet God is unbending in His approach. There can be no love of neighbor, even a neighbor who has done us wrong and who we are allowed not to ‘like,’ if we cannot bring ourselves to forgive that neighbor from the heart.
Jesus’ parable is provoked by Peter’s question, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Peter should have asked a question that begged a “yes” or “no” answer, for his question gave Jesus the chance to up the ante from a paltry “seven” to a phrase [“seventy-seven”] that implies infinity – there is no limit to how many times you should forgive! Jesus’ answer no doubt blew all of Peter’s grudges to smithereens.
As Jesus’ parable unfolds it appears to be a happy story. The king has finally noticed the absurdly large amount of money owed to him [ten thousand talents, says the Greek translations, the equivalent of a 150,000 years’ worth of wages- Hahn]. When confronting his servant, who knew “he had not way of paying it back,”. He “fell to the ground and did [the king] homage,” saying “be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full” [liar!]. And here is the happy ending: “Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.” Had the parable ended here it would have been a tale of extraordinary generosity, a king who truly cared about his servants. But Jesus was making a stronger, and a less happy, point.
One might have assumed that the servant’s life was changed for the better, having escaped jail and having his entire large debt forgiven. That was not the case. The servant was afflicted with a blindness that allows sin to flourish, and he had no sooner left the presence of the king, when he was approached by one of his servants who owed him money, a paltry sum in comparison with what he had just been forgiven [Greek translation says 100 denarii, roughly 100 days wages]. The servant’s treatment of the debtor tells us much about the kind of person we are dealing with: “he seized him, and began to choke him, demanding ‘Pay back what you owe’.” The servant threw him in prison until he paid back the debt.
His fellow servants who knew what had happened were outraged at the behavior they witnessed, and brought it to the attention of the master, who then tells the servant what should have been fully obvious: “Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you?” The servant, who could have lived a very comfortable life, was instead handed over “to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt” [which would have been impossible as described].
As if the sad story of the fictitious servant wasn’t enough, Jesus is not through throwing out a challenge: “So will my Heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.” If the truth be told, haven’t so many of us been tempted to withhold the forgiveness that we are meant to share? For me the remarkable stories of parents who forgive the people who have killed or harmed their children is the benchmark to which I aspire. That is the place that helps me get closer to forgiving those who have betrayed me, those who have ruined my life, those who stopped befriending me, or those who have spread gossip about me. All of what I have just mentioned is not even close to violently losing a child, and yet many parents follow the gospel literally enough that they are capable of performing that remarkable act. May today’s gospel remind us, once gain, of what is expected of those who follow the Lord Jesus. We may suffer a little when we forgive some “from the heart,” but we knew that suffering was inevitable when we decided to follow Jesus.
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