Gospel & Reflection
Gospel & Reflection for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Matthew 18:21-35
Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants
who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him, ‘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?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”
Reflection
Friends, Shakespeare’s play ‘MacBeth’ is a tragedy. As we know it tells the tale of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland.
But this prediction awakens his dormant, deadly ambitions, and spurred to violence by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan as he sleeps and takes the Scottish throne for himself. However, immediately, everything unravels. Racked with guilt and paranoia, Macbeth and his wife plot and commit further murders to protect themselves from suspicion and revenge. Eventually, the viciousness perpetrated by the power-hungry couple, leads to their insanity and finally their deaths.
What is interesting about the play is that it was written around the beginning of the 1600’s. So, hundreds of years before we had psychiatry, Shakespeare was writing of a psychosis in Macbeth and a neurosis in Lady Macbeth. Having contrived to kill King Duncan, before and after the murder, Macbeth continually sees a knife with blood on it. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” Lady Macbeth begins compulsively rubbing her hands together, trying to wash away the hallucinatory blood she sees on them. What begins with her saying “A little water clears us of this deed”, becomes for her, “Will these hands ne’er be clean?”
Ahead of his time, and in his own masterful way, Shakespeare was reminding us of the fact that conscience is inescapable. What goes on within cannot be permanently avoided, silenced, or outrun. In our readings for this weekend, we are offered the only true antidote to a troubled conscience or a heavy heart – that is the mercy of God and the transformative power of forgiveness.
In our First Reading, Sirach, the writer of Ecclesiasticus offers us some gentle wisdom about the things that weigh us down. He observes that we often hold tightly to anger and resentment, keeping them close to our chests like a heavy shield.
He points out that this does us no good whatsoever; and he then challenges us with the question – can we honestly demand compassion from the Lord while nursing such hostility or hurt against another?
In our Gospel, Peter, perhaps thinking he is being incredibly generous with his merciful and forgiving nature, asks Jesus if he should forgive his brother as many as seven times? He is suggesting a limit to mercy, a point of no return. But Jesus shatters Peter’s assumption. “Not seven, but seventy-seven times.” Through the parable that He then spoke, Jesus reminds Peter intentionally that mercy and forgiveness have no limits because God puts no limit on His mercy and forgiveness towards us. Jesus is teaching us all that true Christian forgiveness must never be counted, measured, or rationed. What flows strong from God to us, we should allow gently flow from us to others too.
But Christ did not just speak superficially about a forgiving and merciful nature, as if it is an extremely easy or automatic thing to do. He witnessed to His own words at His passion and death, forgiving those torturing and murdering Him. Christ knows only too well the struggle involved in mercy and forgiveness – the struggle maybe to forgive and to be kind to ourselves, not to mention being merciful and forgiving to someone who has maybe hurt, betrayed, or done us a severe wrong.
Forgiveness is rarely easy. It is a choice, a daily decision, and often a painful process. It does not mean pretending that wrong was right, that everything is fine, or that justice is not deserved. What is does mean is, releasing ourselves of everything that troubles our heart, which upsets our spirit or distresses our conscience. It is about trusting that God can heal the wounds that sometimes feel too deep for us to heal on our own.
Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ ends in despair; its tragic characters unable to scrub away what weighed upon their conscience. Our faith though, opens for us endlessly the door of hope. We have a God who wants always to restore our peace, our life, and our soul. Trusting and following the Lord’s example of mercy and forgiveness, we pray for the grace to accept His boundless mercy in our life, and the courage to extend it to others.
Fr. Richard
