Continuing to Forgive as Jesus Does 24 Sunday Year A

Sirach 27:30-28:7; Psalm 103; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35

            In the Gospel passage, Peter asks Jesus how many times we are to forgive our brothers while suggesting that seven times is enough. Jesus, though, indicates that forgiveness has no limit by telling Peter we are not only to forgive seven times but seventy-seven times.

         To help convince us of the importance of forgiving those who have wronged us, Jesus tells a story that involves a servant who owed his master “a huge amount”. After begging the master to forgive the huge amount, the master is “moved with compassion,” forgives the servant, and does not require him to pay it back.

         However, when the servant finds a fellow servant who owes him a small amount, instead of being moved with compassion as the master was, the servant chokes the fellow servant and even has him “put in prison until [the fellow servant] paid back the debt.” 

         The master represents the Heavenly Father. The servant represents us who have all deeply offended God, but our Heavenly Father, in his divine, infinite mercy, extends his mercy to us. The fellow servant represents our brothers and sisters who, compared with how we have offended God, have only offended us in a minor way. 

         With this parable, Jesus is teaching us that, ever aware of God’s infinite mercy towards us, we are to forgive all the comparatively minor offenses done to us by our brothers and sisters; or, as Jesus says, we risk being imprisoned spiritually in a similar manner as the master in the story imprisoned the harsh, unforgiving servant.

         Two prominent figures in healing ministries, Father DeGrandis and Betty Tapscott, relate God’s command for us to forgive with God’s desire for us to be free:

God wants you to be free. He wants to heal you—spirit, soul and body. However, we can never be completely free and healed until we forgive. Forgiveness is the foundation for all healing. Many times, unforgiveness is also accompanied by hate, resentment, revenge, anger and bitterness. If we allow these negative emotions to remain in our spirits, we perhaps will end up with a physical problem such as arthritis, high blood pressure, stomach problems, colitis, or heart problems. (If you have one or all of these diseases, we are not saying that unforgiveness is the root cause, but we are saying that many times these emotions do cause physical problems.)^[1]

         Often, though, when we think we have fully forgiven another person, resentful anger resurfaces along with memories of the pain, of the wound, that was inflicted upon us. Sister Miriam Heidland, who also ministers in healing ministry, mercifully tells us that when we experience “anger aris[ing] again about something we thought we forgave,” this experience “is an invitation of Jesus to another level of freedom, of deeper healing and forgiveness.”^[2]

         Lord Jesus, help us to love and forgive as you love and forgive, and when anger and resentment arise, may we ask for greater freedom to forgive more deeply. May God bless you all – Father Peter

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^[1]Betty Tapscott and Fr. Robert De Grandis Forgiveness and Inner Healing, 1.

^[2] Sr. Miriam Heidland, John Paul II Healing Retreat.