Sunday Sermon: the forgiveness we show is the forgiveness we will receive

The liturgy of the twenty-fourth Sunday in ordinary time is based on the following readings: Sirach 27:30-28:7; Psalm 102; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35. The main theme of these readings is on God’s forgiveness of our sins which will depend on our willingness to forgive the sins of others against us. In the first reading, Ben Sira warns his people that a spirit of vengeance and anger towards another is an obstacle to receiving forgiveness for one’s own sins. This is a great lesson for us in our society today; where the capacity to forgive is essential to allow life to go on. We are warned in the first reading that we cannot expect to present ourselves before the Lord at our last hour and hope to receive mercy if we have not already shown mercy to our neighbor, including those we may judge as enemies! In the Gospel, Jesus narrates in a parable the unforgiving servant who extorted the last penny from a fellow servant who had his debt; shortly after he had been forgiven by his master. When the master heard this, he was so annoyed that he decided to deal with the pitiless servant with all the harsh severity of justice. The aim of this parable is to bring to our awareness, how often we want to be forgiven while we hardly want to forgive those who offend us. This is a common problem because we all often use double standard when it comes to being forgiven and forgiving others. ‘We deserve forgiveness while others must face justice.’ So we think! Jesus’ parable teaches us that being forgiven in any way should always be enough reason to forgive the faults against us. That is why he concludes his teaching so wisely by saying that the forgiveness we show is the forgiveness we will receive. In the second reading, after St Paul had found out that the Christian community in Rome was divided; he wrote to them in an attempt to reconcile them. He teaches them that forgiving one another is so essential because as Christians, we do all on the Lord’s behalf, and he is so forgiving. And to the Lord we reserve the responsibility of requesting the accountability of every man’s action. The doctrinal message stressed in our liturgy is the basic reason why we should forgive very readily; it is because we too need forgiveness. This is a basic truth which we often pretend to forget. This idea of forgiveness remains central to Jesus’ teaching; especially in different communities which have known all sorts of divisions, discrimination, wars, genocides and the likes. As one of such societies, we too should learn how to meditate on our own injustices, because such an exercise enables us to see and judge with compassion the injustices of others. Such an understand makes a Christian aware that the commandment of Christian forgiveness is not just the arbitrary will of God, but the recognition of our own basic weakness, or unworthiness; which does not give us the right to demand from others what we sincerely know that we too cannot fulfill. This is the moral lesson that Jesus gave to the scribes and the Pharisees, when they were eager to stone an adulterous woman: Jesus reminded them of their own grave sins, and meditatively, they all dropped down their stones, ‘beginning with the oldest of them’. From a pastoral point of view, we generally think of our relations with others in a fairly neutral way. ‘If you do not scratch my back I will not scratch yours.’ Then life will go on. Such a situation is dangerous, because it requires from all those who are concerned the minimum civil tolerance and benign coexistence. Such a situation of ‘a neutral status quo’ does not heal a wounded society. On the contrary, it conditions a superficial dispensation of a certain measure of forgiveness for any wrongdoings against others or against us, which forgiveness is not from the bottom of nobody’s heart. And in the last analysis, all is superficial. The Christian reality and morality emphasizes a true community dimension. We are called to establish an intense community life with others, where each one achieves his full growth and development in and for others. In a society like ours which has been seriously fragmented by her own history, true and sincere forgiveness and reconciliation is hard to come by, but it is the only way forward in building a nation. We need to continue the struggle at a personal level to establish and to maintain sincere and intimate openness. Even in cases of very grave offenses, true forgiveness heels both the offender and the offended. In any case, if you feel the temptation of forgiving people and slam the door on them; remember at least that the forgiveness we show is the forgiveness we will receive. Ends