How many times should we forgive? Always!

Forgiving others can lift our spirit and help us grow as sons and daughters of God.

Our readings this weekend certainly continue from where we left off last week. A week ago, Jesus gave us a pattern, or a model, of how we should deal with hurts and wrongs in a mature and Christian way. It is what we might call a Christian process of reconciliation. It is a powerful and wonderful antidote and alternative to the usual way that such hurts or wrongs are tackled, such as following the maxim, “Don’t get mad, get even.” 

Now we have our Gospel on Sunday where, not surprisingly, St. Peter, impetuous and keen as ever, asks Jesus a follow-up question that could very much be our question too: Okay, so how many times should I forgive someone? This is a very good question and one we may encounter often. Perhaps many times each day! 

The first thing Jesus does is to correct Peter’s idea that forgiveness is somehow an accounting process: a sort of variation on three strikes and you are out. Instead, Jesus clearly says you must forgive someone an infinite number of times; that is, we are asked to forgive always (this, by the way, is the Biblical meaning of the phrase “seventy times seven”). We can be sure that this idea would have shocked St. Peter and the other disciples. There was, at the time, a general law of retribution, or perhaps better put, restitution, for wrongs and hurts called the “lex talionis” (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth). Incidentally, this law is still strongly present in many cultures today. Jesus, however, seems to cancel, or at least substantially modify, this well-established law. 

Jesus then goes on to show why this unlimited forgiveness needs to be the hallmark of his disciples: a new law of forgiveness and restitution. He uses the simple parable of the two debtors to explain exactly why we need to forgive others always. As we hear the parable, it becomes clear that we are in the position of that first servant. God, in his infinite love and mercy, has forgiven us an impossible debt that we owe to him. This debt is forgiven in Jesus’ own death and resurrection. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And, as St. Thomas Aquinas observed: “The power of God is seen, above all, in the act of his forgiveness and the use of his mercy, for the way He has of showing his supreme power is to pardon freely.” We cannot hope to pay this debt. This is true, whether it be all our faults and failings, or whether, more positively, we want to give back for all the blessings that we know that we have received from God.  

It therefore follows that if we have been forgiven (and, we might also add, been given) so much, can we not then forgive those who are in debt to us (for example, if they have wronged or hurt us)? After all, we echo this when we say the words of the “Our Father:” “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The question before us is, “Well, do we?” 

There is yet more about forgiveness in Jesus’ words. Yes, as we have seen, Jesus gives us the motivation, or perhaps the reason, why we should forgive others: because God has forgiven our “debts.” However, showing forgiveness is not really some sort of grudging duty or obligation, something that we have to do just because we have been forgiven. It can be life-giving too. As St. John Chrysostom puts it beautifully: “Nothing makes us so God-like as our willingness to forgive.”

Forgiving others can lift our spirit and help us grow as sons and daughters of God. That is why Jesus speaks about binding and loosing toward the end of the Gospel passage. Not forgiving can bind us just as much as the person who has wronged us is bound in debt to us. An unforgiven hurt can sour us and it can be very toxic. Indeed, whole lives have been blighted by such unresolved and unforgiven hurts. This too is why Jesus asks us to forgive others “from our heart.” If we do this, our forgiveness may or may not be accepted. Indeed, it may not even be acknowledged. That lack of acceptance of forgiveness would be sad indeed, but at least we can be “loosed” from the hurt.