Mass Readings:
- Ecclesiasticus 27:33-28:9
- Romans 14:7-9
- Matthew 18:21-35
There are few Christian commandments more easily repeated and more difficult to obey than the one we hear in today’s Gospel: “Forgive your brother or sister not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” In other words, forgive without keeping count. At first hearing, this can sound almost unreasonable. What about justice? What about those who have been quietly wounded, exploited or humiliated? Does Christ really expect the victim simply to absorb every injury and call it forgiveness? The Church’s answer is more profound. Forgiveness is not the abolition of justice, but the refusal of vengeance. It does not require us to pretend that evil was harmless, nor does it necessarily restore the relationship to what it once was. It asks something more difficult: that we refuse to allow another person's sin to dictate the condition of our own heart. On the eve of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, this teaching acquires an especially powerful perspective. The Cross shows us that Christian forgiveness is not sentimental generosity. It is costly love. And the following day, on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, Mary will stand before us as the mother who suffered terribly without allowing suffering to become hatred.
When anger becomes vengeance (Ecclesiasticus 27:33-28:9)
The first reading, from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, belongs to Israel's wisdom tradition. Its subject is strikingly contemporary: anger, resentment, revenge and hatred. The author moves almost imperceptibly from the memory of an offence to the desire for retaliation. There is, however, an important distinction. Christianity does not teach that every wrong must simply be ignored. A victim may quite properly seek justice. There can be circumstances in which a wrongdoer should be restrained, reported or even punished. Society itself could scarcely function without some form of justice. But justice and vengeance are not the same thing. Justice seeks to restore what has been damaged and to protect what is good. Vengeance seeks to make the offender suffer because we ourselves have suffered. The first can be an expression of moral responsibility; the second easily becomes another form of evil.
Ecclesiasticus is particularly interesting because the offence that seems to trigger the resentment is not necessarily some enormous crime. The language suggests insult, injury to one's dignity, wounded pride. How readily a relatively small offence can become enormous once our honour has been involved? We all know the phenomenon. Someone says something unkind; we replay it in our minds. We discover another motive behind it. Then another. What began as an unpleasant moment becomes a case against the person. Eventually we are no longer remembering what happened; we are nourishing our anger. The wisdom of Scripture is therefore surprisingly practical: do not allow an injury to become an identity. The author also gives two reasons for forgiving. The first is our own need for God's mercy; the second is the remembrance of the last things. We are not autonomous creatures who may construct our moral universe according to our own resentments. We ourselves stand before God as people in need of mercy.
We belong to the Lord (Romans 14:7-9)
St Paul gives this thought an even deeper foundation. “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. While we are alive, we are living for the Lord; and when we die, we die for the Lord.” The immediate context concerns disagreements among Christians about food and the observance of particular days. Paul is not especially interested in settling every such dispute. His greater concern is that Christians should not destroy their communion over matters that do not belong to the heart of the Gospel. His principle is simple: we belong to Christ.
That changes even the question of forgiveness. The Christian does not possess an entirely private moral universe in which he may say, “I will forgive if and when I feel like it.” If we truly belong to the Lord, our relationships must be ordered according to His will. This does not mean that Christian spirituality permits no legitimate differences. Paul himself recognises that Christians may practise their faith in different ways. One person may pray in one manner, another in another. What matters is whether the heart is directed towards God. The same principle applies to forgiveness. We may differ in temperament, circumstances and emotional capacity. But we cannot simply rewrite Christ's command because forgiveness happens to be difficult.
The debt that cannot be repaid (Matthew 18:21-35)
Then comes Peter's question: “Lord, how often must I forgive my brother or sister if they wrong me? As often as seven times?” Peter probably thinks he is being generous. Seven is already an impressive number. But Jesus destroys his arithmetic: “Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.” The point is not that we should keep a notebook and forgive precisely seventy-seven offences. The number represents completeness. Forgiveness is not to be rationed. Jesus then tells the parable of the servant whose debt is impossibly large. Ten thousand talents is deliberately extravagant. It represents a debt beyond any realistic possibility of repayment. The servant begs for time, but the king does something much greater: he cancels the debt altogether. Then the same man encounters another servant who owes him a comparatively tiny sum. Instead of extending the mercy he has just received, he demands payment and has the man imprisoned. The contrast is the entire point. The Christian is someone who has first encountered mercy. We do not forgive because the injuries committed against us are insignificant. We forgive because, before God, we ourselves stand as debtors who have received what we could never have earned.
Yet there is an important qualification. The parable does not teach that evil does not matter. Nor does it suggest that victims must remain in dangerous situations, abandon legitimate legal remedies or trust someone who continues to harm them. To forgive is, above all, to relinquish hatred and the desire for revenge. It is to surrender the right to make another person suffer merely because we have suffered. Reconciliation can require more. It requires truth, repentance and often restitution. Trust may have to be rebuilt slowly, if it can be rebuilt at all. Sometimes the most Christian relationship possible is not restored intimacy but peaceful distance. Forgiveness does not say, “Nothing happened.” It says, “What happened was wrong, but I refuse to let that wrong determine what I become.”
The Cross does not call evil good
Tomorrow the Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. There could scarcely be a better commentary on today's Gospel. At Calvary, Christ does not answer injustice with another injustice. He does not call evil good. He does not deny the cruelty of those who condemn Him. Yet from the Cross comes the prayer: “Father, forgive them.” This is precisely why Christian forgiveness cannot ever be reduced to a mere psychological advice about “letting go”. It is participation, however imperfectly, in the very love of Christ! And the following day we contemplate Our Lady of Sorrows. Mary stands beneath that Cross. Her forgiveness does not mean that she does not suffer. She does not cease to be a mother because she forgives those who have harmed her Son. That is an important consolation for anyone who has been seriously wounded. Forgiveness does not require the disappearance of sorrow. One may forgive and still grieve. One may refuse revenge and still seek justice. One may entrust judgement to God without pretending that the wound never existed. Mary shows us precisely this mysterious union of sorrow and faith.
There is, therefore, a danger in speaking about forgiveness without speaking about justice. Sometimes the language of Christian forgiveness has been misused against victims: “You must forgive, therefore you must tolerate everything.” But that is not the Gospel! Consider, for example, a family in which one person persistently abuses alcohol or another destructive habit and refuses every attempt at change. It would be profoundly wrong to tell the injured spouse simply to endure everything because “God commands forgiveness”. Forgiveness does not require enabling another person's sin. Nor should a Christian intermediary in a dispute rush to reconcile the victim with the offender at any cost. Peace without truth is not Christian peace.
The first question must always be: What will genuinely serve the good of the person who has been harmed, the conversion of the person who has caused the harm, and the restoration of what is right? Sometimes that means speaking. Sometimes remaining silent. Sometimes confronting. Sometimes creating distance. Sometimes involving others. But the Christian motive must never be the pleasure of humiliation. The same principle applies to our ordinary lives. Before confronting someone, we ought to ask ourselves honestly: Do I want this person to become better, or do I simply want the satisfaction of being right? That question can expose much.
Ultimately, our Lord is inviting us into a particular freedom. Hatred binds us to the person who wounded us. Every recollection becomes another payment extracted from the same old debt. We imagine that by refusing to forgive we are punishing the offender, yet often it is our own hearts that remain imprisoned. Forgiveness breaks that chain. It does not erase memory. It does not abolish justice. It does not require renewed trust where trust would be imprudent. It does not make reconciliation possible without repentance. But it does something extraordinary: it prevents another person's sin from becoming our own. That is why the command to forgive is not an invitation to weakness. It is an invitation to become like Christ. And perhaps that is the deepest meaning of the Cross. Christ does not conquer evil by becoming another version of those who commit it. He conquers it by refusing to reproduce it. So when we are asked, “How many times must I forgive?”, the Christian answer remains the one Jesus gave to Peter: not because the offence does not matter, but because mercy matters more. And when, tomorrow, we look upon the exalted Cross, and the day after upon the sorrowful Mother standing beneath it, we may understand why.
Fr. Dominik Domagala acquired a Master's in History of Liturgy and obtained a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture at St Patrick’s College in Maynooth. His main interests concern the OT and Books of Maccabees. He is the author of “The Social Sermon” blog on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Check out more at the website: thesocialsermon.com