Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

FORGIVE US OUR DEBT

            Jesus tells us a heartwarming story to “chisel out” eternal truth. I have a special affection for today’s Gospel. The mercy of God to his children is boundless. Few parables in the Gospel have the overpowering force of this one – not even the slightest objection can be raised against it. Almost no other parable confronts us so dramatically with the extent of our sinful lovelessness: we demand incessantly from our fellow men what we think owe us, without giving a moment’s thought to the immensity of the debt God has given us. Distractedly we pray the petition of the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts, as we also…”, but we fail to consider how unwilling we are to renounce a bit of our earthly justice, even though God has waived passing heavenly judgement on us.

            In today’s Gospel we owe a very great deal to the fact that Peter had a quick tongue. Again and again, he rushed into speech in such a way that his impetuosity drew from Jesus teaching which is immortal. On this occasion, Peter thought that he was being very generous. He asked Jesus how often he ought to forgive someone, and then answered his own question by suggesting that he should forgive seven times.

            St. Peter was not without warrant for this suggestion. It was Rabbinic teaching that a person must forgive another three times. Rabbi Jose ben Hanina said: ‘He who begs forgiveness from his neighbour must not do so more than three times.’ Another Rabbi, Jose ben Jehuda said: ‘If a man commits an offence once, they forgive him; if he commits an offence a second time, they forgive him; if he commits an offence a third time, they forgive him; the fourth time they do not forgive.’ The biblical proof that this was correct was taken from Amos. In the opening chapters of Amos, there is a series of condemnation on the various nations for three transgressions and for four (cf. Amos 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 13; 2:1, 4, 6). From this, it was deduced that God’s forgiveness extends to three offences and that he visits the sinner with punishment at the fourth. It was not to be thought that people could be more gracious than God, so forgiveness was limited to three times.

            Peter thought that he was going very far, for he takes the Rabbinic three times, multiplies it by two, for good measure adds one, and suggests, with eager self-satisfaction, that it will be enough if he forgives seven times. Peter expected to be warmly commended; but Jesus’ answer was that the Christian must forgive seventy times seven. In other words, there is no reckonable limit to forgiveness.

            The question I pose here is; shouldn’t we be merciful to others as God is merciful to us? The reading from the Old Covenant recognizes all of this in minute detail: “A man refuses mercy to his fellow men yet seeks to be granted pardon by the Lord.” Even to the Old Testament sage this was an utter impossibility. Thus he appeals not to general humanistic sensitivities but explicitly to God’s covenant, to God’s offer of both grace and forgiveness of sins to Israel: “Think of the covenant of the Most High and forgive faults.”

            We are called to be free to forgive. The second reading deepens this foundation Christologically. We who sit in judgment over right and wrong do not even belong to ourselves. In all of our existence we are those who owe ourselves to the forgiving goodness of the One who has already on our behalf taken away our debt. When St Paul says, “None of us lives for himself”, it means two things: no one owes his existence to himself; as someone who exists he owes himself to God. More than that, he owes himself more profoundly to the One who has already paid his debt and he remains his debtor in the deepest sense. This by no means makes him into a servant or slave of the friend, rather, just the opposite: the King releases into freedom the servant whose debts he forgave. If we owe ourselves entirely to Christ, then we owe ourselves to divine love that has loved us “to the end” (John 13:1). To owe ourselves to love means to be permitted to love and to be able to love. For man that is precisely the most sublime freedom.

            “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight”, Sirach says. Now the Gospel speaks of the king’s anger as he throws the “wretched servant” into prison, that is, hands him over to the very justice he had insisted on for himself. What is this wrath of God? It is the effect that a loveless person. A loveless person who closes the door to divine mercy out of a narrowly egotistical understanding of debt-forgiveness clearly condemns himself. God’s love judges no one; the verdict, as St John says, consists in man’s refusal to accept God’s love (John 3:18-20, 12:47-48). James summarizes this in a short statement: “Judgment is merciless to the one who has not shown mercy, while mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13). And the Lord himself says, “The measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you” (Luke 6:38). May God give us the grace to be merciful to our brothers and sisters.