9 March 2021
Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent
So often we pray, without thinking, the Our Father, in it saying to God, “…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In effect we are saying, “As I forgive, Father, forgive me.” Consider what grudges you hold against anyone, what forgiveness you have yet to extend to someone who has offended you; will you be the servant being forgiven, or thrown into prison?
We have to look at the Greek to get a sense of how serious this man’s offense really is. In our Gospel we are told the servant owed “…a huge amount.” In the Greek, however, we read that it was ten thousand talents; a talent was worth roughly 6,000 denarii, and a denarii was roughly the equivalent of a day’s wage. This means the servant owed the king a debt roughly equaling everything a man could earn every day for about 164,383 years. The servant he would later choke, demanding repayment, owed him a mere one hundred day’s wages; a paltry sum by comparison. Now consider every time you have gone to Confession, when you begged your King for mercy, and He granted it! Have you, in turn, forgiven those who have wronged you; have you shown even your enemies the love Jesus has shown you when you were His enemy in your sin?
When we look at the Cross we see our impossible debt: could we ever repay that? Never. But that is where mercy enters the picture: God is so rich in mercy that He will happily forgive us our debt if we ask Him, but we must not withhold from others the wealth of mercy we have been shown.