If you want mercy and forgiveness, give it!

 

Upon reflection of the readings for the twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, there’s a series of rather strict injunctions in the Book of Sirach (Sirach 27:30--28:7).  There is what seems to be a bit of quid-pro-quo; when we forgive, then when we pray for mercy, we’ll receive it.  We’re encouraged to remember how we’ll feel as we near death.  We should remember God’s commandments and God’s covenant of love. 

The Old Testament reading is a good tie-in to the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 18:21-35), when Jesus used Peter's question about exactly how many times that he, and we, are to forgive our brothers and sisters.  Of course, Jesus didn’t give a straight answer with which Peter, and we, could argue.  He described a story from which Peter, and we can draw our own answer.

An owner desiring to settle all claims and debts has compassion on a servant who had a large debt and was unable to make any repayment.  Upon his total acquittal, the same servant seized his fellow servant who owed him a lesser amount and when that servant begged for patience, he was refused and thrown into prison.

We get the picture pretty quickly, but Jesus, wanting to emphasize his point, continued.  Other servants report this matter to the owner who confronts the first servant with the reminder of how the servant had been forgiven his debts which were large, but he couldn’t forgive his fellow servant a lesser debt.  The result was that the owner had the servant handed over to be tortured until the whole debt is paid.  Jesus then turned to Peter, and us, and says that this is how things will play out for us when we will be forgiven to the extent that we have forgiven others from our hearts. 

Obviously, seventy times seven is a biblical exaggeration, making a reference to the unlimited scope of God’s forgiveness of us which we are to reflect in our dealings with those who have trespassed against us.  I have a somewhat humorous anecdote about this exaggeration, that I just realized.  One of my childhood friends tended to, shall we say, test his mother’s patience.  After one particularly trying day, she said to him, “That’s four-hundred and eighty-nine!”, meaning he was pretty close to being grounded if he didn’t stop his behavior.  I never put two and two together about what she was talking about until I read today’s Scripture!  

We have the faculty of memory which can be long and exact, especially about our having been injured in some way.  Forgiving is not the same as asking our memory to delete past hurts.  Because we remember so well, we assume we haven’t really forgiven.   We can easily call up the video and sound bites of those incidents which call for forgiving.  We can likewise go through the whole painful experience again in our emotions, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t forgiven.  This is hard for us.

Perhaps forgiving is not an emotional release from the awareness of the injury or injustice, but revealed when we live with the lumps, bumps and dents with less anger dominating our spirits and actions.  Memory can seem to hurt us, but it’s also part of our spiritual freedom from resentment.

We can pray with the memory that we’ve been forgiven by God and hopefully by others.  We may have to be more exact about how we’ve trespassed against others and how we’ve received compassionate mercy from them.  This may help us reduce the immensity, in our hearts’ eyes, of the injuries done to us.

There may be injuries we just can’t forgive right now and so we pray for patience with ourselves.  Our severity of judgement most often injures ourselves and not those who originally hurt us.  We’re to remember that though our memories are long, life is short.  We’re to pray with the reality of God’s commandments, God’s covenantal love and according to the Gospel, if we take our resentments to the grave, then God won’t take them away after death.  Does that make God severe?  It seems that with our own grudges in one hand and our severe sense of justice in the other, there wouldn’t be any room for God to offer peace and eternal welcome.

The message here is that God has been personally caring for each human being with forgiveness, guidance and intense love and these reminders will help us in turn to be equally caring, forgiving and loving.