Sirach 27:30—28:7 (or 28:9); Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35
Peter comes to Jesus with what sounds like a very generous question: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” (Matthew 18:21). Peter probably expected congratulations. Jewish teaching often spoke of
forgiving repeatedly, and Peter’s seven sounded wonderfully generous. Perhaps he expected Jesus to say, “Excellent, Peter! You are finally making progress.” Instead, Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22), sometimes translated “seventy times seven.” Jesus is not asking Peter to carry a notebook and stop forgiving at number seventy-eight or number 491. Imagine a husband saying, “Darling, that was offence number 490. Be careful—the next one is your last!” Jesus means that forgiveness cannot be reduced to arithmetic. Why? Because God does not deal with us by arithmetic. The foundation of Christian forgiveness is not that the person who hurt me deserves forgiveness. It is that I myself live every day because I have received mercy.Jesus explains this through the unforgettable parable of the unforgiving servant. A king settles accounts with his servants, and one servant owes him ten thousand talents (Matthew 18:23-24). The amount is deliberately enormous—far beyond anything an ordinary servant could repay. The servant falls down and begs, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything” (Matthew 18:26). It is almost humorous because there is no realistic possibility that he can repay such a debt. But the king does something astonishing. He does not merely give him more time; “moved with compassion,” he releases him and forgives the entire debt (Matthew 18:27). That king represents the mercy of God. The Bible repeatedly describes God in precisely this way: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8). Micah says that God “delights in mercy” and casts our sins “into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18-19). Isaiah gives an even more beautiful picture: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow” (Isaiah 1:18). Christianity begins not with what we do for God, but with what God has already done for us.
The Old Testament gives us a wonderful human picture of such mercy in the story of Joseph. His brothers were jealous of him, threw him into a pit, sold him into slavery, and allowed their father to believe that he was dead (Genesis 37:18-35). Years later the situation was completely reversed. Joseph had become powerful in Egypt, while his brothers stood helpless before him begging for food. He could have taken revenge, and nobody would have questioned his power to do so. Instead, Joseph wept. He revealed himself to them and said, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5). Later, after their father’s death, the brothers again feared that Joseph would finally take revenge. Joseph answered, “Do not be afraid. Am I in the place of God?” and assured them that he would provide for them and their children (Genesis 50:19-21). Joseph did not pretend that his brothers had done nothing wrong. He called the deed what it was: “You intended evil against me.” But he also saw that God could bring good even from evil (Genesis 50:20). Forgiveness does not mean calling evil good. It means refusing to allow another person’s evil to determine what kind of person I will become.
Unfortunately, the servant in Jesus’ parable learns nothing from the mercy he receives. Immediately after being forgiven his enormous debt, he meets a fellow servant who owes him a much smaller amount. He grabs the man by the throat and demands, “Pay what you owe!” (Matthew 18:28). The second servant falls down and uses almost exactly the same words the first servant had used before the king: “Have patience with me, and I will pay you” (Matthew 18:29). We expect the first servant suddenly to remember, “Those words sound familiar!” But he refuses and has the man thrown into prison. That is the tragedy of the story. He received mercy, but mercy never entered his heart. His account was cleared, but his heart remained unchanged. Jesus is telling us that grace received must eventually become grace given. That is why every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer we say something rather dangerous: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). We are asking God to make his mercy toward us visible in our mercy toward others.
David gives us another Old Testament example. King Saul repeatedly tried to kill him. Yet when David found Saul helpless in a cave, he refused to take revenge, saying that he would not raise his hand against the Lord’s anointed (1 Samuel 24:4-7). Later David again found Saul vulnerable while he slept, with Saul’s spear beside him. Abishai whispered, in effect, “David, God has delivered your enemy into your hands. Just give me one chance!” David again refused (1 Samuel 26:7-11). We sometimes have our own version of Abishai living inside us. It whispers, “Now is your opportunity. Send that message. Tell everybody what she did. Give him the same treatment he gave you.” Revenge always presents itself as justice, but very often it simply produces another wound. David understood that he could entrust judgment to God without becoming Saul himself.
Perhaps this is why St. Paul tells us, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” and “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:17, 21). Notice that Paul does not say evil is imaginary. Christian forgiveness is not pretending that nothing happened. Nor does forgiveness always mean immediate reconciliation. Reconciliation requires repentance, truth, safety and often time. Forgiving an abusive person does not mean returning to an unsafe situation. Forgiveness means surrendering the desire to make another person suffer simply because I have suffered. We hand judgment over to God and refuse to let resentment become the permanent tenant of our heart. As Paul says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32).
One of the most moving Christian examples is St. Maria Goretti. In 1902, when she was only eleven years old, she was violently attacked and fatally stabbed by Alessandro Serenelli after resisting his sexual assault. Before she died, Maria forgave him and expressed the hope that he too would one day be with her in heaven. Alessandro was imprisoned and for years remained hardened, but eventually repented profoundly. After his release he asked forgiveness from Maria’s mother, Assunta, who also forgave him. He later spent many years serving quietly at a Capuchin monastery. Maria’s forgiveness did not say that Alessandro’s crime was small—it was terrible. Forgiveness said that his terrible act would not have the final word. Mercy opened a door through which even a guilty man could return to God. That is the strange power of forgiveness: sometimes the person we forgive discovers that he can become a different person.
A similar story happened not in the distant past but in the life of an ordinary American mother named Mary Johnson. Her only son, Laramiun Byrd, was killed in Minneapolis in 1993 by a sixteen-year-old named Oshea Israel. Mary carried deep anger for years. Eventually, prompted by her Christian faith, she asked to meet Oshea in prison. They talked for two hours. At the end, they embraced, and Mary realized that the hatred she had carried for years was beginning to lose its hold on her. After Oshea’s release, their relationship continued; remarkably, for a time they even lived next door to one another. Mary later founded an organization to help families affected by homicide. What makes her story powerful is that forgiveness did not erase her son’s death. It did not make murder acceptable. It prevented murder from taking two lives—the life of her son through violence and the rest of her own life through hatred.
But most of us will not be asked to forgive something as dramatic as Joseph, Maria Goretti or Mary Johnson. Our battlefield is usually much smaller: the husband who spoke harshly, the wife who keeps bringing up an old mistake, the brother who caused trouble over property, the sister who did not invite us, the neighbour who spread gossip, the colleague who took credit for our work, the parishioner who ignored us, or the relative who made that unforgettable remark at Christmas. Sometimes families stop speaking for years and eventually nobody can remember exactly how the quarrel began. A man once complained to a priest, “Father, I haven’t spoken to my wife for three days.” The priest asked, “Why?” The man replied, “I don’t want to interrupt her!” Sometimes humour reminds us how ridiculous our pride can become. We can win an argument and lose a relationship. We can prove that we are right and still make everybody miserable.
There is an ancient fable about a man walking along carrying two sacks. One hung in front containing the faults of other people, while the sack on his back contained his own. Naturally, he could see everybody else’s faults very clearly but could not see his own. Jesus understands this human tendency perfectly. Elsewhere he asks why we notice the speck in our brother’s eye while ignoring the log in our own (Matthew 7:3-5). The unforgiving servant had the same problem. He could remember perfectly the small debt owed to him while forgetting the enormous debt that had just been cancelled. Perhaps before becoming angry with someone, we could ask one simple question: “How patient has God been with me?” Suddenly the arithmetic changes.
This does not mean forgiveness is easy or instantaneous. Sometimes it is an act we must repeat. Peter asked how many times he must forgive, and perhaps Jesus’ answer also recognizes that the same wound may need to be surrendered many times. We may forgive today and feel the anger returning tomorrow. Then we forgive again—not because the first forgiveness was false, but because healing is often a journey. Jesus himself gives us the supreme example. From the cross, surrounded not by apologetic friends but by people mocking and killing him, he prays, “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). Stephen follows the same path while being stoned: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). Christian forgiveness therefore is not simply good manners. It is participation in the heart of Christ.
We come before God like the servant standing before the king with a debt we cannot repay. We do not come because we have perfect records. We come because the King is compassionate. We say, “Lord, have mercy.” And God does.
The simple message of today’s Gospel is forgiven people are called to become forgiving people. God’s mercy is not a small cup that we carefully preserve for ourselves; it is a river meant to flow through us. When we stop that river, our own hearts become stagnant. When we allow it to flow, something inside us becomes free. So, stop rehearsing the offence. Stop feeding the anger. Forgive as you have been forgiven, leave judgment to God, and walk home a little lighter.
Satish Selvarance