23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr. Victor Feltes
In Jesus’ parable today, a servant owes his king an extraordinary debt. Our English translation obscures the amount but in the original Greek text it is 10,000 silver talents, with each talent being about 75 pounds of silver. In the ancient world, it would take a day laborer more than 150,000 years to earn that much from wages. That’s an amount akin to something like seven billion dollars today. How could a servant get himself into a hole of debt that deep? How wealthy would a king have to be to be owed so massive a debt? It is an amount unrepayable for any ordinary person, but this servant’s king is very rich in compassion. The servant pleads and his lord has pity. He forgives the man’s entire loan and lets him go.
Now this forgiven servant was a lender himself. One of his fellow servants owed him (in the original Greek) 100 denarii. That’s 100 days’ wages in the ancient world, something like $15,000 today. That’s not nothing but it’s a much smaller amount than seven billion dollars. The newly debt-free man seeks out this fellow servant and starts choking him while demanding, “Pay back what you owe!” Despite his neighbor’s pleading for patient mercy, the forgiven servant confines that man to debtors’ prison until he should pay back his debt in full.
Now their fellow servants are deeply troubled to see this and report the situation to the king and master of them all. The king summons that unforgiving servant and pronounces a swift judgment: “You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” And then in anger, the unforgiving servant is thrown into debtors’ prison until he should pay back his debt in full.
Jesus tells us this parable and then declares: “So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.” Therefore this is a parable about God and us. The king in this parable represents God. And the servant, whose unrepayable debt to the king will only be forgiven if he forgives his neighbor, represents you and me.
God is our King to whom we owe everything. He is all-good and deserving of all our love. So when we sin in rebellion against him it creates a debt we cannot repay ourselves. But thanks be to God, forgiveness is offered through Jesus Christ when we repent and seek mercy. However, Jesus notes elsewhere in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.” “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” will “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Now some folks feel alarm at this teaching because they fear they cannot forgive. Typically they believe that they cannot forgive because they think “forgiveness” means things it doesn’t.
Forgiving is not the same thing as forgetting. You can’t make yourself have amnesia and forget; you might remember someone else’s misdeed for the rest of your life. Forgiveness doesn’t mean saying what a sinner did wasn’t serious or wrong. If the sin committed was gravely wrong, to say otherwise would be untrue. Forgiveness doesn’t mean the offense no longer hurts. Only grace and time can heal some wounds, but we can still forgive while feeling pain. Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean pretending nothing happened. Sometimes going back to the way things were before would be imprudent or even wrong. But you can forgive someone even before they can be trusted. You can forgive even before they are sorry for what they did. Because forgiveness means loving someone despite the wrongs that they have done. Jesus did this from the Cross. He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” while he was still in terrible pain and before they were sorry.
Is there someone you are worried that you haven’t forgiven? Then pray for them, since you cannot hate someone and pray for them, willing their greatest good, at the same time. Is there someone you find it hard to pray for? Then that’s whom you should pray for, for their sake and for yours. If you reach the pearly gates and see someone inside whom you hate, you will have to wait outside until you can love that person whom the Lord has reconciled to himself. Forgiveness loves someone despite their sins like Jesus loves us. Jesus came to reconcile us to one another and to the Father. So have mercy. Jesus heals the wounds of sin and division. So have mercy. And Jesus intercedes for us with our Father. So have mercy on others, too.
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