we, in this Sunday's Eucharistic celebration, receive God's forgiveness for our sins, and grace to show spontaneity and generosity in forgiving our neighbours their offences against us.
DOCTRINE AND FAITH
(Sir 27,33-28.9; Romans 14,7-9; Matt 18, 21-35: 24th Sunday of the Year, 13th September 2020)
On this Sunday, the liturgy offers us a teaching on forgiveness and mercy. Forgiveness has great importance in our lives, because we are all sinners and imperfect. We offend God and one another and, if there is no forgiveness, the situation would be truly tragic, with no way out: We would go from one revenge to the other, until complete destruction. This, unfortunately, occurs among men today. God in his goodness came to bring us his mercy and forgiveness, but he also asks us to forgive. The Old Testament already shows the relationship between the forgiveness we receive from God and that which we must grant to our brothers. The passage from the first reading (Sirach) that we read today shows that it is, completely, incoherent to ask to be forgiven by God and at the same time, refuse to grant forgiveness to our brothers: If anyone keeps anger against another man, how dare he ask the Lord for healing? Healing is dependent on forgiveness. The Old Testament establishes a close relationship between sickness and sin. Therefore, in order to be healed, one must first be forgiven. He has no mercy for his fellow man, and dares to pray for his sins? He, who is a mere human, holds grudges; who will forgive his sins?
It is completely illogical to want to be forgiven and refuse to forgive others. The author addresses this invitation to the faithful: Forgive the offences of your neighbour, and then you will be forgiven as answer to your prayer. Jesus reinforces and makes this Sirach’s teaching more convincing with a parable, in which he shows the inconsistency of he who was forgiven but refuses to forgive his neighbour. In this parable Jesus speaks of debts; also in the prayer Our Father, he speaks of forgiveness with the image of debts: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive them to our debtors. Peter asks Jesus: Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother if he sins against me? Peter understood that the Lord is merciful and wants to propagate mercy; but he thinks that there should be a limit to forgiveness, that one cannot forgive indefinitely; therefore, he says: Up to seven times? For Peter forgiving his brother seven times already seems a lot and even for us forgiving a second time for the same type of fault committed against us sounds a lot. When we forgive once, we demand that that fault never be repeated. Peter, therefore, shows that he is generous when he says: seven times. Jesus goes much more radical in his answer: I don't mean up to seven only, but up to seventy times seven. It is like saying: Always. Seventy times seven, in fact, indicates an exaggerated number: it is unlikely that a brother would offend 490 times! In what manner would a person offend another so many times?
With his answer, Jesus wants to tell us that we must always be willing to forgive a brother, even if he offends us all the time. Then he confirms this request with the parable of the merciful king and the merciless servant. The king in this parable is generous. A servant comes to him who owes him ten thousand talents, that is an enormous, incredible sum (millions of Naira!). As the servant begs him, and throws himself on the ground he says: Lord, have patience with me and I will give you everything back, the master, taking pity on him, lets him go, forgiving him the debt. The servant is therefore, the beneficiary of an extraordinary generosity from the master. But as soon as he leaves, he meets another servant like himself, who owes him a hundred denarii, that is, a ridiculous sum compared to ten thousand talents. One hundred denarii at that time meant the wages for one hundred days of work. So it is a sum of some importance, but definitely small in comparison with the other. The servant who has benefited from the generosity of the master does not remember it at all and, seizing his companion, suffocates him and says to him: Pay what you owe! The companion does exactly what the first servant did to his master: he throws himself on the ground and begs him, saying: Have patience with me and I will pay you back the debt.
The situation is completely parallel, but the conclusion is completely different: The servant who has benefited from the generosity of his master does not want to listen to his companion and has him thrown in jail, until he pays all the debts. This attitude is truly absurd. The other servants are scandalised: such an inconsistency is inconceivable! This inconsistency is ours when we refuse to forgive our brothers. God forgave us an enormous debt. At our baptism, we have been forgiven by him, that is, we have been forgiven the original debt; and then, with untiring mercy, God forgives us all sins, as soon as we show the slightest sign of repentance. God uses our sins as occasion of more abundant graces and generous love. But if we close our hearts to the people who have offended us and apologise to us, we are truly in the situation of complete inconsistency. Here is what Jesus wants us to understand with this parable. Jesus also makes us understand that such a situation prevented God's mercy from manifesting itself. If we want to receive God's mercy, we must allow it to pass through us, forgiving those who have offended us. Jesus tells us that we must forgive from the heart. Our forgiveness must not be given reluctantly, with difficulty, but must be generous and full of delicacy. In fact, the person who offends us puts himself in an unhappy situation, really negative for him. The Bible makes us understand that whoever kills another person kills himself, that is, kills his own soul. And we must have compassion for this person rather than showing resentment or contempt. In the Our Father, Jesus wanted to express the same teaching: He directly related the forgiveness we implore from God with the forgiveness we are willing to give to our brothers: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Jesus wanted this teaching to be firmly rooted in our hearts. We must know that we cannot receive God's mercy if we close our hearts to our brothers. The heavenly Father is full of love, he wants to offer his love, but he cannot do it if we close our hearts to love others. This is an essential requirement.
In the second reading, Paul affirms: None of us lives for himself [...], because if we live, we live for the Lord. Living for the Lord also means sharing in his mercy. Jesus was merciful to the extreme; he died for our sins and gave his life for us, while we were his enemies because of sin (cf. Rom 5,10). He has overcome sin. Now he asks us to live for him, that is, to live in his love and be united with him in mercy. Paul wants us to share the divine joy of forgiveness. God has great joy in forgiving, and He wants to share it with us. When in a family there is a serious disagreement between its members, the situation is really sad because happiness is not possible for those people. On the other hand, if the obstacle of disagreement is overcome, divine joy can return to their hearts. May we, therefore, ask in this Mass for the grace to be truly disposed and available to receive divine mercy, to receive it for ourselves and also share and make it beneficiary to all our brothers and sisters. +John I. Okoye
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