Rev. Fr. Ezekoka Peter Onyekachi
Sirach 27:30 -28:7 Romans 14:7-9 Matthew 18:21-35
Forgiveness is the giving up of one’s right to return hurt for hurt, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth (Ex 21:24; cf. Mt 5:38-42). Today is Forgiveness Sunday. It was on May 13th 1981 that an assassination attempt was made on the life of Pope St. John Paul II (“the Great”) by Mehmet Ali Agca. As the Pope was entering St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, Agca shot the Pope four times, causing him severe injury plus massive blood loss. The assassin was apprehended immediately and was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Italian court. Following the shooting, the Pope asked people to “pray for my brother...whom I have sincerely forgiven.” In 1983 Agca had a private audience with the Pope, who continued to keep in touch with Agca’s mother and brother, whom the Pope described as his brother. In June 2000, at the request of the Pope, Agca was pardoned by the Italian President, Carlo Ciampi. The Pope was strong; he was able to forgive.
In the parable in today’s Gospel, the king was similarly strong – strong enough to be able to forgive the servant the much he owed. His servant, however, was weak: he lacked the strength to be able to forgive his fellow servant even the little he owed. As a result, the first servant received a severe punishment from his master. It was Peter who asked Jesus how often an offender can be forgiven: As often as seven times? (Mt 18:21). Now, the thinking of the time was that God’s forgiveness did not extend beyond three offences, and that He would exact punishment for a fourth. Yahweh had spelled out a series of condemnations on nations whose transgressions numbered at least three (Amos 1:3-13; 2:1-6); as man could not be more gracious than God, it followed that forgiveness was necessarily limited. In that context, Peter probably assumed that Our Lord would commend him for being big-hearted in expanding the limit to ‘seven times’. To show that forgiveness ought, however, to be limitless, Jesus used hyperbole to extend the number to 77 times or (as some versions of the Bible have it) 70 x 7 times. In other words, heaven places no limits on love, forgiveness and mercy. Our Lord is from heaven, and He is speaking the language of heaven. He is preparing us for how we are to be in eternity. To drive home the point, Jesus told the parable of the unforgiving servant, beginning ‘the Kingdom of heaven may be compared to …’
In the parable, observe how the other servants were stricken by the action of the wicked servant. God’s true people are always stricken when they see people suffering, mistreated, abused, or downtrodden, because God saw that all things were good when He created them (Gen 1:3ff). Cruel and mean treatment always troubles the Christian because it is demonic. Satan and his minions are at work. It could be argued that the unforgiving servant was legally in the right in casting his fellow man into prison because he couldn’t pay his debt, but the question is whether he acted morally, having been forgiven his own unpayable debt. What he did was just, according to the law of the land, but it was not holy according to the law of heaven. The question of how we as Christians meet the demands of justice and holiness continues to confront us. Ignorance of the law is never accepted in court as an excuse for breaking the law. The same holds true in divine law. When faced with an issue with legal implications, it is necessary for us to ask ourselves, ‘what does the law of the land say about it?’ and then, ‘what does divine law say about it?’ If the answers differ, the law of the land may seriously bump up against Our Lord’s teaching (cf. Jer 29:11). Any act that is deemed to be just in secular law but sinful according to divine law is not going to be identified as a good moral act. Let’s have a look at how the other servants reacted to the wicked servant’s action. What they did was to take the matter higher; they took it to the king himself. They didn’t sit back quietly and let evil thrive. They did something about it. They didn’t allow legalism combined with oppression to destroy someone. They wanted mercy and compassion and moral justice to be shown. They gave us a model to follow.
In the end, the unforgiving servant ended up destroying himself. After he’d been pardoned, he failed to pardon someone else. He was thrown into prison until he fulfilled conditions impossible to meet – in other words, never. Not forgiving someone is comparable to drinking poison, and then hoping it will kill someone else! A heart that does not forgive, a heart that refuses to forgive, poisons itself. Exhorting us to forgive, the Wisdom writer of the First Reading reminds us that God’s forgiveness and mercy are effected when we forgive one another’s sins. Forgiveness is an expression of holy love for the other person, because it indicates that the God-given humanity of the offender is far more important than their sinfulness. As a Christian, you know the value of the person to God. Judas valued Jesus at 30 pieces of silver, but God values each one of us because He created us in His own image (Gen 1:27), He never forgets us (Is 49:15), He loves us no matter what (Jer 31:3), He died for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8) and He redeemed us by His Blood (1Pet 1:18f).
What can you do whenever you find it hard to forgive someone? Here are some suggestions:
1) Be thankful: When someone has done something which you find hard to forgive, give thanks to God for the experience, because it has made you grow in grace. Oprah Winfrey said: ‘true forgiveness is when you can say, thank you for that experience.’
2) Wish them well: A sign that forgiveness has started in you is when you genuinely wish the person well for God’s sake, even when you are hurting from what they have done.
3) Work on your mind. Remember that the wicked servant intended to pay and begged for patience, as we do too whenever we say, “Forgive us our trespasses …”. Our Lord is the eternal Judge, and He is telling us: “vengeance is mine”.(Deut 32:35; Rom 12:17ff).
4) Move forward: Bearing a grudge holds you back. Don’t you want to move forward? The truth is that unless you deliberately let go, forgive the offender, forgive yourself, forgive the situation and accept that it’s over, you cannot move forward. It is only when we pass on God’s mercy to others that God’s mercy grows in us.
Here on earth, forgiveness is hard because it runs contrary to human nature. One strong reason why we must forgive one another is that when we forgive, we will have discovered that it brings us God’s peace and tranquillity. There is guilt in every heart, but God’s mercy is passed on when we imitate Him in holy love. We must be forgiving and merciful, not merely to fulfil a protocol, not merely to display good manners or to ‘be nice’, but to transform us as it transforms others.
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