Forgiveness Without Borders!

 (Homily 24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Yr-A)

     The readings of today center on the necessity of forgiveness in our rapport with God and with our brothers and sisters. The call and emphasis on forgiveness is grounded upon the fact that we are recipients of God’s mercy, and that we live under the forgiveness of God. The word “forgiveness” abounds in the readings of this Sunday. First of all, it talked about the forgiveness that God gives: “And the servant’s Master felt so sorry for him that he let him go and cancelled the debt” (Mt. 18:27). Interestingly, the first reading talks of fraternal forgiveness, as a necessary condition for divine forgiveness: “pardon your neighbor any wrongs done to you, and when you pray, your sins will be forgiven” (Sir. 28:2). Thirdly, the evangelist talks about forgiveness without limits: “Then Peter went up to him and said, Lord, how often I must forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times? Jesus answered, Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times” (Mt. 18:21-22). Thus, we may well affirm that the measure of forgiveness is to forgive without measure. Above all, St. Paul in the second reading presents the motive of forgiveness, which is nothing but our belongingness to the Lord, for this he says: “For none of us lives for himself…while we are alive, we are living for the Lord” (Rm. 14:7-8). Indeed, forgiveness makes the impossible possible, it transcends the human logic. It is the life of heaven on earth. 

     The teaching of the first reading (Sir. 27:30-28-7) on the theme of forgiveness is close to the New Testament’s parlance on forgiveness. In this passage the sacred author not only placed the forgiveness of one’s neighbour as a necessary condition for God’s forgiveness, but he equally led bare the human condition of createdness: “remember the end of your life, and cease from enmity”. This is a reminder that we are pilgrims on earth and as such hatred and enmity are obstacles in our journey to the Promised Land. In synthesis, the central message of this passage is that it is in pardoning that we are pardoned. With the various questions the author raised on the reason we have to forgive others he led us to true introspection. Just like the Psalmist we cannot but say: “If you O Lord should mark our guilt who would survive (Ps. 130:3). Elsewhere, the Psalmist entered into a spiritual bargain with God, for he does not want to be only a recipient of God’s forgiveness he wanted to be a teacher too (object and subject): “Give me back the joy of your salvation; sustain in me a generous spirit. I shall teach the wicked your paths, and sinners will return to you” (Ps. 51:12-13).

     In the Gospel passage (Mt. 18:21-35) on the parable of the unforgiving servant, which is only found in the Gospel of Mathew, we see the typical phrase of St. Mathew: “My heavenly Father” (v. 35). At the heart of the parable is the rebuke of the refusal to show mercy on the part of those who have received mercy from God. The radicality of the moral of the Gospel is measured on the word pardon or forgiveness. It is a divine invitation that surpassed and overcome the famous lex talionis (law of retaliation) of the Old Testament: “Anyone who injures a neighbor shall receive the same in return, broken limb for broken limb, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. As the injury inflicted, so will be the injury suffered” (Lv. 24:19-20). But Jesus brought about a revolution with his novelty on forgiveness. “You have heard how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer no resistance to the wicked. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well” (Mt. 5:38-39). The Gospels are full of stories of the forgiving attitude of Jesus: on the cross (Lk. 23:34); to the penitent thief (Lk. 23:43). Peter, having seen Jesus forgive others, and having experienced it in his own life, asks if there can be any limit to forgiveness. Jesus gives an answer to emphasize God's total love for his people. Jesus narrated the parable of the two debtors not just to illustrate the modalities of forgiveness, but instead to affirm its urgency and necessity. Therein we have three contexts: the master and the servant, the servant and his fellow servant, and again, the master and the servant. The master cancelled the debts of that servant, the debt of ten thousand talents. This reveals the enormity of man’s debt before God. Then what has man to give God in return? We have to show forgiveness to others as we have experienced it from God. For this the master said: “Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow-servant just as I have pity on you? (v. 33). I think this is the pivot of this passage. We are to pardon or forgive because we have been forgiven by God.

     Furthermore, in that passage Jesus teaches us in concrete terms, that we are all debtors before God, and this debt exceeds all the human possibility of payment. It is a debt we cannot pay. I remember the popular lyrics by Ellis J. Crum:

He paid a debt He did not owe

I owed a debt I could not pay

I needed someone to wash my sins away

And now I sing a brand new song

Amazing Grace

Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.

In God there is always space for pardon, acceptance and re-acceptance, and that is how he pays our impossible debt. Jesus gives us wonderful example of forgiveness in and with the figure of the Master in the Parable. And Jesus Christ is in person, the concrete expression of that parabolic Master, He says “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing” (Lk. 23:34). The most grievous debt of man before God is that of sin, the spiritual and moral retrogression and stagnancy before God’s designs and abandonment of God. God out of justice can leave man in his sinful actions, but He does not; rather He approaches man with mercy and forgiveness instead of justice. As in that parable, He “felt so sorry for him that he let him go and cancelled the debt” (Mt. 18:27).          However, in the parlance of God, pardon begets pardon, the one who has experienced pardon from God, is called to carry out this divine gesture. Here, the person becomes an object and a subject of God’s forgiveness; in the measure he or she is able to give to others what he has received from God. In the passage of today’s Gospel more than any other place, man is called to be a collaborator and a dispenser of Divine Mercy and forgiveness. To pardon those that offended us and to receive pardon from the ones we have offended is the attitude that God expects from us. Interestingly, if God calls us to become subjects of his forgiveness and mercy, it suffices to say that the Church has to be a house of Pardon and a house of Mercy. The Church is the house and the instrument of God’s Mercy, and the sacrament of reconciliation is an existential experience of it.

     Again, what we are called to embrace is a generous pardon, without limits and measures, remember the word of God says “seventy times seven”. It therefore, has to be a pardon that has its inspiration from the pardon received from God. For this, the parabolic master asked: “Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow-servant just as I had pity on you?” (Mt. 18:33). As we read in the first reading, it is pardon or forgiveness that God wanted as a condition for us to be pardoned, “pardon your neighbor any wrongs done to you, and when you pray, your sins will be forgiven” (Sir. 28:2). The pardon or forgiveness we are talking about here has to be motivated by the filial sentiment that a Christian does not belong to himself, rather he belongs to the Lord. For this we have to hearken to the voice of St. Paul in the second reading, to know how to pardon from the heart (Rom. 14: 5-9). As such, it is a pardon that endures in time, leaving out every form of rancor, retaliation and resentment. For “if anyone nurses anger against another, can one then demand compassion from the Lord?” (Sir. 28:3).

     Forgiveness in the human eyes and logic is scandalous, because it requires conversion from the one who suffered the pain and not from the one who committed it. Notwithstanding, we must admit that forgiveness drains the poison and heals the wounds that rancor and hatred create in the human heart, it brings peace. It creates new hearts and new minds. We need to forgive and ask for forgiveness, for we hurt others and others hurt us. Forgiveness is necessary to maintain a healthy relationship and sincere love, be it, in the family, in the Church, in the work or business places and in our society at large. When forgiveness is sincere, it renews and becomes a factor for growth in love. Jesus himself observed this in the house of Simon: “There was once a creditor who had two men in his debt; one owed him five hundred denarii, the other fifty. They were unable to pay, so he let them both off. Which of them will love him more? Simon answered, the one who was let off more, I suppose” (Lk.7:41-43).

     Humanly speaking, sometimes we find out that pardon or forgiveness is indeed tasking, difficult, and to some even impossible, for at times you hear expressions like: “over my dead body”, “I will never”. Of course, there is no gainsaying the fact that pardoning sincerely from the heart is sometimes very difficult, but not impossible. Once again, as we have seen in the readings of today, pardon is repeated like a refrain, as a condition to receive God’s pardon. And each time I or we pray the Lord’s Prayer, it reminds me of this evangelical truth. The Gospel with that parable of the two servant-debtors exemplified this. To the question of Peter: how many times will my brother offend me, seven times? In the parlance of Peter (the human parlance) seven times is already much. But Jesus responded No; I tell you seventy times seven, which entails forgiving always. For a true Christian there should be no limit, no measure and no condition to pardon or forgiveness. To forgive does not necessary mean to forget. One can pardon, but does not succeed in removing it from his or her memory. To forget or to cancel a wrong received from one’s memory is not within our power. But to forgive, Yes! To bear grudges, Yes! Because they depend on our will. To pardon, also does not mean keeping quiet to injustice and overlooking wicked and evil actions, we have to continue to fight for justice.

     On the other hand, one can argue that if we pardon in order to be pardoned by God, then we pardon because of our own interest, even though one may say that it is an egoistic interest. But this type of question springs from the human logic. But the most profound motive is found in the responsorial psalm: “He (God) forgives all your offences, cures all your diseases. He redeems your life from the abyss, crowns you with faithful love and tenderness… He (God) does not treat us as our sins deserve, nor repay us as befits our offences. As the height of heaven above the earth, so strong is his faithful love for those who fear him. As the distance of east from west, so far from us does he put our faults” (Ps. 103:2-4; 10-12). This instead should be the real profound reason and interest for pardon and mercy, the imitation of our heavenly Father, for this St. Mathew says “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). And St. Luke treading the same line of Mathew admonished, “Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate” (Lk. 6:36). The Beatitudes equally resonates the fact: “Blessed are the merciful, they shall have mercy shown them” (Mt.5:7). In the words of St. Augustine, we pardon in order to imitate the goodness and the mercy of God, to imitate his divine benevolence and comprehension, being conscious of the fact that like us, our brothers who offend us or err are poor, miserable, conditioned by many human factors and limitations. Secondly, in the parlance of St. Paul, the motive of this pardon is our belongingness to the Lord: “For none of us lives for himself…while we are alive, we are living for the Lord” (Rm. 14:7-8).

     The virtue and value of forgiveness were so much important and necessary in the preaching of Jesus that he presented a case where reconciliation and forgiveness worth more than our sacrifices or offerings: “If you are bringing your offering to the alter and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first, and then come back and present your offering” (Mt. 5:23-24). We must admit that forgiveness is a hard virtue to gain and maintain, and the difficulty can be felt in the question of Peter: “How many times must I forgive?” Forgiveness is not merely a question of how often or how many times, rather it reflects God's unending readiness to pardon us. There are no limits to His forgiveness. Today, as we hear these words of Jesus, we are like those who are bringing their offerings to the altar, to us therefore, the words of Jesus resounds and re-echoes: “go and be reconciled”. May these words accompany us as we go back home this morning and may Jesus give us the grace to be able to practice it. Lord Jesus enlighten our minds and enlarge our hearts, give us a big and a generous heart, that is ready to forgive always, in imitation of You, the manifestation of the Father’s Merciful Love. Amen!

(Fr. Vitus M.C. Unegbu, SC)