“HONEY FROM THE ROCK”
Daily Reflections
Sunday, 17th September 2017.
Twenty fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Eccl or Sir27:33 – 28:9;
Ps 102: 1-4, 9-12;
Rom 14: 7-9;
Mt 18: 21-35
FORGIVENESS IS THE FINAL FORM OF LOVE
Faithful friends are life-saving medicine. They are beyond price; no amount can balance their worth (Cf. Sir 6:15-16). Yet contrasts, misunderstandings, disagreements in our everyday relationships can lead us to lose friendships and relations. Sometimes, a single mistake is enough to put an end, forever, to a relationship. The inability to forgive, the fear of giving full confidence again to one who did wrong can make irretrievable the bond of broken love.
Sometimes, we are unforgiving to ourselves. We drag our faults behind us. Only one who has a peaceful relationship with oneself is able to recognize one’s own mistake. He knows that a positive recovery from a bitter experience of sin is possible. Sucked into this whirlwind of passions and resentments, we let the greatest joy escape.
God also experiences a hundredfold joy, when he manages to revive a love relationship with us. Even to one who is a great sinner, he always gives the opportunity to start again, giving him back a perennial youthfulness.
Today, Sirach tries to convince us to avoid the senseless behavior dictated by the desire for revenge, anger, resentment. These feelings are an abomination and create an impenetrable shield in the relationship between God and man. They keep them from talking to and understanding each other. He invites us to go beyond simple justice and to open the heart to mercy. The compassion towards those who have wronged us, is shown as an indispensable prerequisite to pray and receive forgiveness from God. “If a man bears resentment against another, how can he ask God for healing?”
St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, tries to resolve the differences of opinions between members of the community? The Apostle presents a principle that helps to resolve any conflict: the Christian must always keep in mind that he does not live for himself, for the pursuit of self-interest, but for the Lord. In his relationship with his brothers and sisters, therefore, he must never be guided by human considerations. He lives and dies “for the Lord.”
Peter opens today’s gospel with a question: “How many times must I forgive the offenses of my brother or sister? Seven times?” This reveals that Peter understood that Jesus intends to go beyond the limits set by the scribes. He had been attentive to Jesus: “…make peace with your brother and then come back and offer your gift to God” (Mt 5:23-24) and “If you forgive others their wrongdoings, our Father in heaven will also forgive yours. If you do not forgive others…” (Mt 6:14-15). “If your brother offends you seven times in one day, but seven times he says to you, ‘I’m sorry’, forgive him” (Lk 17:3-4). He is unsatisfied with seven times (which was totality, always). He seeks confirmation, whether one must not only forgive always, but without any conditions. The answer of Jesus goes beyond that which already scares Peter: “No, not seven times (that is always) but seventy times seven (even more than always)”
The parable of the debtor who owed ten thousand talents (one talent was about 36 kilograms of gold) shows our debt to the Lord. “All have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). Man is an insolvent debtor before God. Showing a generosity without limits, God, the master of the parable condones all the debt. There’s no sin that God cannot forgive; there is no fault superior to his immense love. God cancels“ the record of our debts, those regulations which accused us. He did away with all that and nailed it to the cross” (Col 2:14).In the second part of the story, the same debtor is merciless to another servant who owes hundred denari (one denari was a day wage for a labourer) to him. The merciless servant, however, grabs him by the neck and begins to choke him, saying: give me what you owe! The central message of the parable is to be sought in the huge disproportion between the two debts, and in the stark contrast between the behavior of God who always forgives and that of the man who purports compensation. Jesus is interested in highlighting the enormous distance that exists between God’s heart and man’s, between his love and ours.
Sin is not a simple mistake, but it is the breaking of the covenant relationship and spousal love that binds man to God. In comparison, the distance that separates the greatest saint from the sinner is negligible and can be filled (as the repayment of a hundred denarii).The sins that we have committed do not represent all of our debt. They are only a small sign of the immense distance that separates us from the love of the Father. But God in his “compassion”, cancels it all out. He wants that we do not keep our brothers and sisters a slave of their past. God asks us to help him seventy times seven, renouncing to any recourse against him. The children of the kingdom of God are “merciful as the heavenly Father” (Lk 6:36) and they understood that “love does not delight in wrong, excuses everything, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:5-7). Who has owned this new logic is willing to lose, to forget all his own rights just to see again his brother happy, peaceful and free from his sin.
Reflect, today, upon that person or persons you need to forgive the most. Forgiveness may not make perfect sense to you right away and you may find that your feelings do not fall in line with the choice you are trying to make. Do not give up! Continue to make the choice to forgive, regardless of how you feel or how hard it is. In the end, mercy and forgiveness will always triumph, heal and give you the peace of Christ.
Prayer: Lord, give me a heart of true mercy and forgiveness. Help me to let go of all bitterness and pain I feel. In place of these, give me true love and help me to offer that love to others without reserve. I love You, dear Lord. Help me to love all people as You love them. Jesus, I trust in You. Amen.