How Many Times Have You Forgiven God?
Year A – 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 18:21–35: ‘How many times must I forgive?’
Today we conclude Jesus’ fourth discourse, which brings together the Lord’s teachings on community life. Today’s Gospel passage continues from last Sunday’s, which focused on fraternal correction.
In this context, Peter asks Jesus: ‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Peter suggests a generous number: seven, the number of fullness. He certainly knew that the rabbis spoke of three or, at most, four times, but he was also well aware of Jesus’ insistence on forgiveness.
Indeed, when teaching his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, the only petition that Jesus then explicitly commented on was precisely the one concerning forgiveness: ‘For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (cf. Matthew 6:14–15).
And, in a similar context, Jesus would say: ‘And if [your brother] sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you saying, “I repent”, you shall forgive him’ […] and only a hundred denarii, the equivalent of about a hundred days’ wages. When the master learns what has happened, he becomes angry and revokes the cancellation of the debt. And Jesus’ conclusion is, once again, surprising and severe: ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.’
1. Forgiveness is a decision… and a journey!
We are all very much aware of how difficult it is to forgive. Forgiveness is hardly ever spontaneous. What comes spontaneously instead is anger, resentment, and the desire to give as good as we get. An old saying goes: ‘The first time, you forgive; the second, you let it go; the third, you give them a blow!’ Some even regard forgiveness as a form of weakness: anyone who forgives is supposedly incapable of standing up for their rights; goodness is seen as an inability to rebel, patience as cowardice, and forgiveness as an inability to take revenge (Nietzsche).
The word ‘forgive’ in Italian, perdonare, derives from Latin and reinforces the idea of ‘giving’: it means to give completely. Yet for the person who forgives, this is by no means a ‘cheap’ gesture. At times it costs blood and tears. God’s grace too, Bonhoeffer reminded us, is not ‘cheap grace’: forgiveness has been given to us through Christ’s love carried all the way to the cross.
For this reason, forgiveness is the fruit of a decision sustained by grace. And it is not always a decision made once and for all. Often, it has to be renewed every time memory brings the offence back to mind and rekindles the pain in the heart. Forgiveness matures gradually, until it can become a deep and enduring disposition.
We learn to forgive… by walking the path of forgiveness.
Unfortunately, many Christians will listen to this word while carrying resentment towards someone in their hearts, perhaps for years, determined not to forgive a wrong they have suffered. And they may hear it without feeling touched in the slightest. ‘Yes, yes,’ they tell themselves, ‘it is a beautiful idea, but unrealistic. Real life is something else! Besides, what they did to me was far too serious…’
2. But… how many times does God forgive?
The answer seems obvious: always! But are we really convinced of that?
In Jesus’ time, some rabbis even debated the number of times God would forgive before punishing. Yet the Old Testament continually speaks to us of God’s love and mercy, as today’s responsorial psalm proclaims: ‘The Lord is good and great in love’ (cf. Psalm 102).
There are, however, also texts that use very harsh language, such as the prophet Nahum: ‘The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is full of wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and harbours resentment against his enemies’ (Nahum 1:2).
The people of God gradually came to understand the depth of divine love. In Jesus, this revelation reaches its fullness: God is Father, God is love, God is mercy. Yet we too run the risk of imagining God in our own image and likeness: not a just God, but a punitive judge; not a Father, but a master; not Someone to love, but someone to fear and to ‘keep on our side’.
Why, then, does Jesus seem almost to threaten us at the end of the parable: ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart’? Jesus wants to emphasise forcefully how inseparable the forgiveness we receive and the forgiveness we give truly are. Not because God’s mercy has a limit or is granted only under certain conditions, but because the heart can close itself to the gift. God’s forgiveness asks to be received. Stubbornly refusing to forgive is like spreading a waterproof sheet over ourselves: the water of mercy continues to fall, but it cannot penetrate.
3. And how many times have you ‘forgiven’ God?
The question may be surprising and may even make us smile. Of course, strictly speaking, God does not need our forgiveness, because he commits neither injustice nor wrongdoing against us. And yet our hearts can come to accuse him, to feel wounded by him, and even to harbour resentment towards him.
We all know someone who has drifted away from faith angry with God because, at a time of anguish, a prayer seemed to go unanswered; because God supposedly ‘allowed’ a tragedy to happen; because of a devastating bereavement; an illness; or a suffering that seemed impossible to understand.
And what are we to say about wars, the suffering of innocent people, and the injustices spreading throughout the world?
I would venture to say that almost all of us have something to ‘forgive’ God for: some reproach, some unanswered question, some wound that we attribute to him. Sometimes we do not even have the courage to admit it, and we bury it deep within our hearts.
Perhaps we need the courage to stand before God in the fullness of our truth. Even after confession, we might raise our eyes to heaven and say to him: ‘Lord, there are things I still do not understand. Where were you when this happened to me? Why did you allow that other thing to happen? I suffered, and at times I was even angry with you. But I want to go on trusting you. I entrust to you my questions, my anger and my wounds, because I love you.’
This too can be a journey of reconciliation with God: not because he needs to be forgiven, but because we need to heal the wounded image of him that we carry within us.
4. And how many times have you forgiven yourself?
We often find it difficult to forgive others because we are not at peace with ourselves. Perhaps we have not forgiven ourselves for a failure, the humiliation of a weakness, a wrong choice, or some trouble we have caused. We may know that God has forgiven us, and we may even have been forgiven by the people we have hurt, yet still continue to condemn ourselves inwardly.
We therefore need to ask for the grace to receive fully the forgiveness that has been given to us and to learn to forgive ourselves as well. I might say to myself: ‘Manuel João, God has forgiven you. Receive his mercy. Do not remain a prisoner of your mistakes. Learn from them and go in peace!’
Forgiving ourselves does not mean trivialising the wrong we have done or avoiding responsibility for it. It means recognising that no mistake has the right to speak the final word over our lives.
The final word always belongs to mercy.
For meditation…
- Ephesians 4:32 — ‘Be kind to one another, merciful, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.’
- Colossians 3:13 — ‘Bear with one another and forgive one another… As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.’
- 2 Corinthians 5:18–20 — God ‘has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation’: the Christian is called to be an ambassador of reconciliation.
Fr Manuel João Pereira Correia, MCCJ
Fr. Manuel João, comboni missionary
Sunday Reflection
from the womb of my whale, ALS
Our cross is the pulpit of the Word
