Mass readings for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Sirach 27.30-28.7 Psalm 103.1-4, 9-12 Romans 14.7-9 Matthew 18.21-35
Forgiveness is central to the Christian life. We affirm this in our creeds, when we pray the “Our Father.” It’s not just a Christian peculiarity that we put so much emphasis on it. Indeed, the idea of forgiveness is present in every major religion, philosophy and ideology. There is a common understanding, on some level, that the weight of accumulated error on the part of humanity requires a means of relief. It’s just that there is a disagreement on what that needs to be, how and when it is to be applied, what are the criteria for applying it; that is, who deserves the forgiveness. It also has to be weighed against other priorities, like justice. Or rather, forgiveness has to be put in right relationship to justice so as to not nullify justice nor make forgiveness the source of moral anarchy. Christians aren’t being told to choose between justice and forgiveness.
But from the Church’s perspective, in its faithfulness to Christ’s teaching on the necessity of forgiveness, we understand that forgiveness is actually indispensable to justice, and integral to our human flourishing.
The gospel reading today directly continues from what was proclaimed last week. So, if we remember what Jesus was talking about then, we will know the context for this teaching on forgiveness: it was reconciliation within the community of faith; how do we deal with a brother or sister in Christ who sins against us? It’s interesting to note, this is all a matter of internal affairs, and so, must raise in our minds the question of how we are to deal with those outside the Church who sin against us. Do we forgive them the wrongs they do to us?
Well, yes. However, we cannot expect the same reconciliation we hope to have with our brothers and sisters in faith. Indeed, there might never be reconciliation with the non-Christian, including the nominal Christian, the lapsed Catholic. Yet for that we must always pray. Our practice of forgiveness is part of our witness to those outside the faith. Incorporation into Christ is the means by which humanity is reconciled to God, and relieved of the burden of sin.
We might remember from our last time at confession that the priest, in pronouncing absolution of our sins, said that God has “through the death and resurrection of his Son [has] reconciled the world to himself.” We, as the Church, baptized into that death and resurrection, take on the role of being an agent of reconciliation. We know the old saying, “To err is human, to forgive divine” and that should underline for us that forgiveness is a participation in the divine. It is part of our process of growing in holiness, and that is not a growing away from the world, but rather it is affecting the transformation of the world toward God’s design for everyone – humanity’s sanctification. We often refer to Christ as the New Adam, or the New Man. He is the model and type for us to emulate in becoming actually more human; and he is a man who forgives his persecutors, his torturers, those who murder him.
Pope Saint John Paul II, in his celebrated encyclical, Dives in Misericordia (1980), wrote,
“Society can become “ever more human” only when we introduce [into all the mutual relationships which form its moral aspect the moment of] forgiveness, which is so much of the essence of the Gospel. Forgiveness demonstrates the presence in the world of the love which is more powerful than sin. Forgiveness is also the fundamental condition for reconciliation, not only in the relationship of God with man, but also in relationships between people.”
If you were here last week, you might recall that I lamented what was becoming of us as a society: that indeed, many now look to settle conflicts, not in a spirit of true reconciliation, but as the aggrieved, looking to claim the status of victim, to be seen as the one sinned against. The aim is to cast the other as wrong-doer and have justice visited upon them. That’s a horrifying prospect.
Saint John Paul continues,
“A world from which forgiveness was eliminated would be nothing but a world of cold and unfeeling justice, in the name of which each person would claim his or her own rights vis-a-vis others; the various kinds of selfishness latent in man would transform life and human society into a system of oppression of the weak by the strong, or into an arena of permanent strife between one group and another.”
Do these remarks resemble what we see around us today? And not just in distant lands, but here among us within the once celebrated Canadian mosaic?
That world is something we see in the gospel story today: the slave who goes around the household demanding repayment, even seizing one of his debtors by the throat. The physical threats aside, he is within his rights. Forget that his own massive debt has been forgiven. By law, he is entitled to demand those who owe him to pay up. And we can see the resulting distress among the servants of the household who then run to the king and report what has been going on.
In that instance, the forgiveness of the master of the household is withdrawn and payment in full demanded. Now, of course, the master is God, and that is our Heavenly Father’s right and proper role in the final judgement of those who reject his example of forgiveness. It doesn’t stand as a rationale for us to be so harsh. We aren’t the master nor the judge. We continue to forgive, seventy-seven times and more.
But as Christ today is set aside by so many nominal Christians, as other creeds and ideologies take hold among us, as we return to a time that resembles pagan Rome in all its disparities and cruelties, we must recognize the need to work all the more to spread the gospel, and bring people into the community of mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation.
The liberal presumption that everyone naturally defaults to a Christian ethos, albeit without Christ, is proven nonsense. Some religious faiths tend to a depressing fatalism. That is, forgiveness is beside the point. The universe is unfair, we will suffer injustice, such is the way of the world, and the sooner we can come to peace with that, the better. It is to shrug at the behavior of the slave in our story today who bullies his fellow slaves – what are you going to do? For in their conception, one can’t go to the king, the master of the house, he is an absentee landlord. He may not even exist.
Other systems of belief are aghast at the suggestion of such freely offered forgiveness. A sin against another isn’t simply that. It is also against God as it flouts his law and the very order of the cosmos; it offends the honor of God. Punishment must be applied, an example made to keep others from doing the same. And with respect to reconciliation, and we know this too well, submission is actually preferred and submission takes the form of fear.
We see this around us, not only in terrorism, and other forms of violence, but among those who defend it, justify it, even advocate for it as the means of justice. People must live in fear of the debt collector. That is not Christ’s vision for us.
What we rightly desire for the world will always be seen as Christian prejudice. We want everyone to come to Christ, but it’s not so we can say, “we won.” Rather, it is because in Christ we see the way out of the trap of retribution and revenge that follow from the sins we commit against each other.
As we heard in the first reading, ‘anger and wrath’ are abominations as they lead into sin. Those sinned against, by their vengeful impulse, become even greater sinners and so, will face God’s justice. Our earnest desire is not punishment, but reconciliation with each other, above all with God, and so, also peace – peace among us, the peace of God in the hearts of all. And that will only truly be found in Christ.
Amen.