12 August 2021
Thursday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Our Gospel reading follows immediately from yesterday with Jesus’ guidance on resolving interpersonal conflict. Peter questions to what extent Jesus is asking us to be merciful and forgive those who have wronged us. I imagine Peter’s tone with an escalating sense of disbelief, believing that Jesus could not possibly mean to forgive someone 77 times. As is typical for Jesus, he provides a story to any limited question to stretch the hearer’s understanding.
The parable of the unforgiving servant is one we likely know from memory. The master of the servant forgives the servant’s debt, which is considerable. For the master, the sum of money owed to him might not have been much of a concern. Wealthy individuals usually do not worry about money like people who have some of it but never enough. The unforgiving servant collects on loans owed to him, probably a sum of money less than he owed to the master initially. What is curious is the experience of mercy from the master did not change the servant’s heart. Mercy was an action done unto the servant, but it was not an action that became him. The memory appears drowned out by the concerns which fill the servant’s mind. Jesus hopes that mercy is a way of being for us connected to a fundamental recognition that we need to it.
Experiences of the expansiveness of God’s mercy take time to transform our hearts. A line from the poem “Time Tested Beauty Tips” by Sam Levenson shares the point elegantly: “People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed.” And to that sentiment, we could add people will need to be redeemed, and redeemed, and redeemed. To be forgiving is a difficult task, so that is why we pray for it every time we recite the “Our Father,” as we say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” If we do not tire of praying for the gift, mercy stands all the chance more to seep into every fiber of our being.