After the instruction on fraternal correction that we heard last Sunday, Matthew’s Gospel continues with Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness, starting with the apostle Peter’s question about “how many times” he should forgive his brother who “sins” against him. Now the theme we reflect on is closely connected with that of a week ago. This is as suggested also by the similarity of Peter’s initial conditional phrase (“if my brother sins against me”), which actually echoes that of Jesus at the beginning of the previous discourse (“If your brother sins against you”). Thus, among Christ’s disciples, fraternal correction goes hand in hand with forgiveness among brothers and sisters, with the emphasis precisely on the latter, as highlighted in Jesus’ teaching today through a statement and a parable. So it will be to duly scrutinize every word of Jesus, to take to heart His message for us, His disciples, in a world increasingly marked by wars, conflicts and hatred.
The apostle Peter’s question is provocative in itself: “How often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” It nonetheless gives a glimpse that Peter perceived well the foundation of Jesus’ teaching on fraternal correction, which must always have for its purpose forgiveness and reconciliation among brothers and sisters. On the other hand, this question also expresses the apostle’s perplexity about how to regulate the case of the repetition of faults received. Since we know that in the Judeo-Rabbinic tradition there is a recommendation to forgive brothers and sisters up to three times, we can understand Peter’s “generosity” to increase the “rate” of forgiveness up to seven times. Moreover, it should be remembered that the number seven in the Bible symbolizes completeness and perfection, because it corresponds to the days of God’s creation of everything. In this way, the apostle Peter wanted to ask, with some bewilderment, whether one should really forgive almost all the time.
Jesus’ response plays exactly on the symbolic value of the number seven: “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” That is to say always for ten times of always! It is the constant, permanent, forever brotherly forgiveness that Jesus recommends to His disciples. In other words, every disciple is called to always forgive his brother and sister, and the reason for such “generosity” lies precisely in God’s generous forgiveness of everyone in life, as Jesus wanted to teach immediately afterwards through a parabolic account.
The parable Jesus tells to illustrate the need for forgiveness is commonly called “the parable of the unforgiving servant.” The message of the story emerges clearly from the contrast between the reactions of the master, and later the servant, to the same moving plea from the debtor: “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.” While the master, “moved with compassion […] of that servant, let him go and forgave him the loan” of ten thousand talents, the servant, for his part, would not forgive his companion the debt of one hundred denarii. The numbers of the characters’ debts seem to have been chosen intentionally to emphasize the difference between the very large sum that the servant owed the master and the much smaller sum that the servant demanded from his companion. Thus, the absurdity of the ruthless and ungrateful servant’s action is even more apparent.
In this regard, if we pay more attention to one detail in the parable, we can grasp a deeper message about the forgiveness requested from us. It is about the sum of one hundred denarii that the servant refused to forgive. Yes, this is a small amount compared to ten thousand talents, but objectively it does not seem so small because it is the equivalent of one hundred days of work (about a third of an annual salary). Significantly, Jesus did not present a smaller figure, such as ten denarii, to further emphasize the contrast. Instead, he stayed with this medium-small amount. This amount could still have been very large for this servant at that time, and therefore not forgivable. Perhaps we can glimpse a subtle lesson from the Lord regarding forgiveness. Sometimes in life we have suffered offenses that seemed very great. In fact, some “debts” owed to us by others are objectively so great that, humanly speaking, we cannot forgive them. The Lord knows this and does not question it. All He asks is that we should remember our much greater debt to our heavenly Father, who has forgiven it for us. This will give us more motivation and strength to forgive our brother generously, just as God has generously forgiven us. In the final analysis, this is the only invocation of the Lord’s Prayer in which our petition to God the Father is linked to our promise and commitment to forgive our debtors, “those who trespass against us.” In this context of the prayer “Our Father”, where we begin by praying for the coming of His Kingdom, our forgiveness will also be a concrete sign of the coming of the Kingdom in our midst. Therefore, this parable of Jesus about the need for forgiveness is also the parable of the Kingdom, as Jesus himself defined it at the very beginning of the account.
At this point, it will be important to take up here the emphases at the end of last Sunday’s meditation.
Indeed, in light of what we have noted, we understand even more the “missionary” significance of every act of correction and fraternal reconciliation, based fundamentally on mutual forgiveness among brothers and sisters. It is about being united in love for the credibility of the same evangelization/reconciliation mission of Christ and of the church-community of His disciples-missionaries. That is why Jesus insisted so much on mutual love among His disciples, defining it as His new commandment and stressing the importance of this as a testimony of belonging to Him before humanity: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples.” He then prayed to the Father for all His disciples, both in the present and in the future, “so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.” (Jn 17:21). May each one of us, his disciples, feel Christ’s heart for unity in love and always have that desire of the Master in mind in every action! This is especially true of our action of forgiving “our brother from our heart,” as our heavenly Father has forgiven us.
We therefore conclude, also today, with St. Paul’s inspired words to the Thessalonian believers. They are also the Lord’s wish for all of us, His disciples-missionaries today, even in the midst of various corrections necessary because of human weaknesses. “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.” (1Thes 3:12-13).
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