Word to the Wise
Thursday, August 16, 2007 - Nineteenth Thursday in Ordinary Time
[Joshua 3:7-10A, 11, 13-17 and Matthew 18:21-19:1]Peter approached Jesus and asked him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
The parable of the unforgiving servant appears only in Matthew. It follows on the question of how the community must handle situations where members are not acting properly. Jesus outlines a process to follow. But this process must include a consciousness of forgiveness. Occasionally a community can forget what it is like to need and receive forgiveness. Then mercy is replaced by revenge and punishment. The parable is meant to illustrate how easily it is to forget our own sin and forgiveness when we are in the position of someone who is sinned against! The final lines of the parable echo the words that appear after the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:14-15. If we do not forgive one another, we cannot expect God to forgive us either. When ultimate forgiveness depends on our all-too-weak ability to forgive, we need to pay attention. We could ask ourselves for starters if there is someone in our life whom we find it difficult if not impossible to forgive. If we can deal with that, the lesser ones may be much easier to handle. What is clear from this parable is that we cannot expect to call ourselves true Christians unless we are willing to forgive "not seven times, but seventy-seven times." AMEN
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