God’s Mercy and the Challenge of Letting Go

 24 Sunday of Ordinary Time

God forgives us a debt we could never repay, and that mercy becomes the foundation of our own call to forgive others. Forgiveness is difficult, especially when wounds are deep, but it can free us from resentment even while healing takes time. The more deeply we recognize the mercy we have received from God and from others, the more able we become to extend that same mercy ourselves.

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After reflecting on this Gospel, I realized it is one of those situations where there is good news and there is bad news. So, do you want the good news first? The good news is that God is infinitely merciful. God always forgives us. God has forgiven us a debt that we could never hope to repay. Do you want to hear the bad news? We also have to forgive. And we do not get to choose who we forgive.

Let us start again with the good news. In this parable, a servant owes the king an enormous amount of money. Another translation simply says that he owes “a large sum,” which is one of the understatements of the century. Our translation says that he owes ten thousand talents. A talent was a measure of wealth, and it is difficult to know exactly what that amount would be today, but one talent could represent roughly fifteen years of wages for an ordinary worker. Ten thousand talents, then, would be something like 150,000 years of wages. Just let that settle in for a moment: 150,000 years of wages. The servant could never repay that debt. It was impossible. Yet when he falls before the king and begs for mercy, the king forgives him completely.

That tells us something important about God. In different ways, all of us have done things in life that we cannot completely repair. We have broken relationships. We have hurt people. We have made choices whose effects continue in ways we cannot always see. It is a bit like throwing a stone into a pond. The ripples move outward, and we do not always know how far they go. There are things we cannot simply undo, and yet God gives us mercy.

There is an old story about a man who dies and arrives at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asks him, “Why should I let you in?” The man begins listing all the good things he has done. He tries to explain that he has lived a decent life and helped others. He goes on for a while, but St. Peter does not seem convinced. Finally, the man gives up and says, “You should let me in because of Jesus.” That gets to the heart of it. Of course, we are called to follow Christ, to do good, to love others, and to respond to God’s grace. But ultimately our salvation is a gift. It is because of Jesus Christ, because of what he has done for us, because God sent his Son to reconcile us to himself. God has forgiven a debt that we could never repay. Whatever we have done, wherever we have fallen, God is always ready to show mercy when we turn back to him. He gives healing. He gives us another beginning. That is the good news.

The challenge is that Jesus then asks us to become merciful as God is merciful. And this is where the parable becomes uncomfortable. The servant who has just had this unimaginable debt forgiven goes out and meets a fellow servant who owes him one hundred denarii. That is roughly one hundred days of wages. It is not nothing. It is a real debt. But it is nothing compared with the 150,000 years of wages that he has just been forgiven. And yet he refuses to show mercy. He grabs the other servant and demands, “Pay what you owe.”

We can hear that and think, “I would never act like that.” But if I am honest about my own life, I do this more often than I would like to admit. When someone hurts me, especially when there is a history there, part of me can begin to say exactly the same thing: “Pay me what you owe.” Maybe I do not say those words aloud. But I can hold on to the hurt. I can hold on to resentment. I can rehearse the offence in my mind. Forgiveness is difficult. Christianity challenges us in many ways, but perhaps one of the hardest things Jesus asks us to do is to forgive, especially to forgive those who have really hurt us. God is merciful, and we are called to be merciful. And we do not get to choose who is worthy of our forgiveness.

So how do we grow in this? I would suggest three things. First, forgiveness is also a gift that brings peace to us. There is an expression you may have heard before: resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person gets sick. When we hold tightly to resentment, we often think somehow that it punishes the other person. But in reality, it usually harms us. It weighs on our hearts. It robs us of peace. Forgiveness is certainly something we offer to another person, but it is also, in a sense, a gift we give ourselves. It frees us from allowing the hurt to control our interior life.

Second, I think it is important to distinguish between forgiveness and healing. Sometimes people say, “I cannot forgive that person because I still feel hurt.” But those are not exactly the same thing. Forgiveness can be a decision before it becomes a feeling. Jesus tells us to pray for those who hurt us. Sometimes forgiveness begins simply by saying, “Lord, I give this person to you. I do not want hatred or resentment to control me.” That does not mean the hurt disappears immediately. Healing often takes time. If someone has hurt us deeply, we should not expect all the pain to vanish because we prayed one prayer. We should not become discouraged because we do not suddenly feel warm and positive toward that person. Forgiveness may be the first step. Healing may take much longer.

Third, and this is really the main message of the parable, when we struggle to forgive, we need to remember how much mercy we ourselves have received. Sometimes when I find it difficult to forgive someone, I need to remind myself how often I have failed. I need to remember how often others have been patient with me, how often people have forgiven me, and above all, how often God has forgiven me. The more aware we are of mercy received, the more capable we become of mercy given. Mercy can flow through us. When we recognize how much we have been forgiven, it becomes a little easier to forgive.

So perhaps during this Mass, we can ask the Holy Spirit for a very particular grace. We can ask the Holy Spirit to shine a light into our hearts and show us whether there is someone we are struggling to forgive. Maybe there is a person whose name still brings up resentment. Maybe there is a hurt we continue to carry. Perhaps the Lord is inviting us today to take one step—not necessarily to pretend the hurt never happened, not necessarily to feel completely healed right away, but to begin. To place that person before the Lord. To pray for them. To say, “Lord, as you have been merciful to me, help me to become merciful too.” God’s mercy is the good news, and because we have received that mercy, we are called to let it flow through us to others.

When Someone Hurts Us: Jesus’ Path to Reconciliation

 23 Sunday or Ordinary Time, A

Jesus teaches us not to respond to hurt with gossip or retaliation, but to take courageous steps toward honest conversation and reconciliation. Sometimes we need the help of trusted people and the wider community to see a conflict clearly, because our own hurts can distort the way we understand what has happened. Reconciliation also requires humility when we are the ones who have caused harm, because the health and unity of the whole Christian community depend upon our willingness to seek peace with one another.

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In the Gospel today, Jesus speaks to us about a challenge that all of us experience, something that can be very painful and very real in our lives: what do we do when somebody hurts us? Jesus says, “If your brother or sister sins against you,” and then he lays out a kind of process for how we should respond, with the ultimate goal of reconciliation. Someone may say something about us, act in a way that harms us, or create real difficulty in our lives. The question is: what do we do next?

Jesus begins with the first step. When someone harms us, what should we do? Step one: go and gossip about that person to others. Well, no, that is not what Jesus says, although it is often what we are tempted to do. Our first response when someone hurts us can be to lash out, tell other people about it, seek comfort from others, or get people on our side. Jesus proposes a different path. He says, first, go and speak to that person in private.

Already in this first step, there is important advice. Jesus says, “If your brother or sister sins against you.” Before we even approach the person, there is an invitation to discern. Sometimes an interaction hurts us, but has the person really sinned against us? Was there perhaps a misunderstanding? Maybe I was in the wrong. Maybe my feelings were hurt because someone corrected me or told me something I did not want to hear. Jesus first invites us to stop and think: what actually happened here?

Then Christ invites us to do something that can be very brave and very difficult. Before telling everyone else, go and speak to the person. That conversation gives us the opportunity to hear their side. Maybe the way we experienced the situation was not the way they experienced it. Maybe we attributed intentions to them that were not really there. This first step requires courage, but it can prevent many conflicts from becoming much larger than they need to be.

Jesus then goes further. If we have that conversation and nothing comes of it, we move to step two. Is this now the point where we complain to everyone else and broadcast the other person’s faults? Again, not quite. Jesus says to bring one or two others with you and speak to the person again.

In our own lives, this exact form may not always be practical, but the principle is very important. It might mean speaking to someone we truly trust, someone who is not simply going to take our side immediately. That can be difficult, because when we are hurt, what we often want is someone who will confirm that we are completely right and the other person is completely wrong. But Jesus recognizes that another person may see something that we are missing.

Sometimes we have a long history with someone, and because of that history we can become blind to certain things. Another person may see the situation more clearly. They may help us understand the other person’s perspective, point out something we have overlooked, or help bring about mediation and reconciliation.

This reminds me of the classic children’s story by Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In the story, two swindlers come to an emperor and tell him that they can make him magnificent clothing. The catch is that anyone who is foolish or unworthy will not be able to see the clothes. In reality, of course, the swindlers make nothing at all.

The emperor cannot see the clothes, but he is too embarrassed to admit it because he does not want people to think he is foolish. So he pretends that he can see them. His officials do the same thing. Eventually, the emperor walks through the streets wearing nothing at all, and everyone continues pretending because nobody wants to be the person who admits what is really happening. Finally, a child speaks up and says the obvious: the emperor has no clothes.

Sometimes we can be a little like that emperor. Because of our hurts, our history, or the way we have come to see a situation, we may no longer see it clearly. Bringing another person into the conversation can help us recognize something we have missed. That is part of the wisdom behind this second step.

If that does not work, Jesus gives a third step: tell it to the Church. In Jesus’ time, this would have meant bringing the matter before the broader community. In our own context, with very large parishes, this can seem impractical if we imagine literally announcing every disagreement to everyone. But the deeper principle is important. Our relationships with one another do not affect only the two people involved.

St. Paul speaks beautifully about the Church as the Body of Christ. We are not simply a collection of isolated individuals. We are something organic, a community, a body. When one part of the body is wounded, the rest of the body is affected. In the same way, a serious breakdown in a relationship between two members of a community can have consequences for many others.

So bringing something to the Church is not an invitation to spread gossip or publicize another person’s faults. Rather, it recognizes that sometimes the wider community, or leaders within the community, can help people see the situation more clearly and work toward reconciliation. There may be information or perspectives that the two people involved do not have.

Finally, Jesus proposes something that sounds very severe. If the person refuses to listen even to the Church, Jesus says to treat that person as a Gentile or a tax collector. This points toward what we today would call excommunication. The word can sound very medieval, but at its root it means a breaking of communion.

Excommunication in the Church is not simply about shunning someone or casting them aside forever. It is a very serious step, but its ultimate purpose is medicinal. It is intended to help the person recognize the seriousness of what is happening and, hopefully, to bring about repentance, renewal, and eventual reconciliation.

St. Paul speaks about something similar in 1 Corinthians 5. Someone in the community is acting in a way that is seriously harmful, and even after correction the person does not change. Paul tells the community that the person must be separated from them for a time, but the goal is ultimately that the person will come to their senses and return.

Pope Francis gave a very striking modern example of this. Some years ago, while visiting southern Italy, where organized crime has had a strong influence, he spoke very forcefully about the Mafia. Organized crime can infiltrate communities, including Church communities, through money, intimidation, and violence. Pope Francis said plainly that those who follow the path of the Mafia are not in communion with God. He called them excommunicated and warned them to repent.

Those are very strong words, but the situation was also extremely serious. Even there, however, the goal was not simply condemnation. It was a call to conversion. The purpose of recognizing that communion has been broken is ultimately to invite the person back into communion through repentance and reconciliation.

When we look at all these steps that Jesus gives us, they are not easy. Sometimes we may not be able to follow the whole process exactly as it is described. Sometimes we may make every effort toward reconciliation and discover that the other person is not ready. Reconciliation requires two people, and we cannot force another person to respond.

But Jesus makes something very clear: reconciliation matters. When a relationship breaks down, we should try to repair it. We should resist the temptation simply to gossip, retaliate, or allow resentment to grow. We should ask God for the courage to take a step toward the other person.

There is also another side to this Gospel that we should reflect on. Usually, when we hear Jesus say, “If your brother or sister sins against you,” we naturally imagine ourselves as the one who has been hurt. But what happens when the shoe is on the other foot? What happens when someone comes to us because we have hurt them? Do we have the humility to listen? Do we have the grace to admit that we were wrong, to apologize, and to seek reconciliation?

Ultimately, reconciliation is so important because we are the Church. We are a community. As St. Paul teaches us, when one part of the body suffers, the whole body is affected. We want to be a healthy community, a community marked by joy, peace, and unity, so that together we can continue the mission God has entrusted to us.

Let us pray today, therefore, for a deeper awareness of how important reconciliation is, and for the courage and humility to live it out in our own relationships.

Turning Our Crosses into Crucifixes: How Christ Transforms Suffering

 22 Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Suffering is a reality that none of us can completely avoid, but Christ shows us that it does not have to remain meaningless or destructive. When suffering is joined to love and to the presence of Jesus, it can be transformed and begin to bear life. We are invited to name the crosses we carry and turn them into crucifixes by allowing Christ to enter them and walk with us.

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If you ever look at an information sheet or display about different religions, whether in an airport or some other public place, each religion usually has a symbol associated with it. For the Jewish tradition, we often see the Star of David. For Christianity, the symbol is usually the cross. Today’s Gospel speaks about the cross, which has become this great symbol and theme of our faith. Yet when we look back to the earliest centuries of the Church, the cross was not actually the most common Christian symbol.

When I was a kid, I had the opportunity to visit the catacombs in Rome. Much of the soil around Rome is volcanic, so it can be dug through relatively easily, and once exposed to the air it hardens almost like concrete. Christians buried their dead in these underground tombs and also gathered there to pray, especially during times of persecution. What fascinated me was seeing the different symbols carved into the stone or placed on marble plaques. You see the fish everywhere. Fish in Greek is ichthys, and the letters of that word could be used as an acronym for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. It became something like a secret Christian symbol. You also find bread or sheaves of wheat, symbols connected with the Eucharist.

But one symbol you generally do not find in those early catacombs is the cross. The reason is understandable. The catacombs were used during the centuries before Constantine, when Christians were still being persecuted and crucifixion was still a real form of execution. Early Christians knew very vividly what a cross meant. It was an instrument of torture, suffering, and death. They understood clearly that the cross represented suffering, especially suffering that we do not choose and cannot simply escape.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus confronts this mystery of suffering. He tells us that if we want to follow him and be his disciples, we must take up our cross and follow him. The mystery of suffering and pain is universal, and every philosophy and religion has tried in some way to answer the question of what we are supposed to do with it.

At the time of Jesus, one important philosophical movement was hedonism. As a philosophy, hedonism taught that pleasure is good, pain is bad, and the purpose of life is therefore to seek pleasure and avoid suffering as much as possible. Another important movement was Stoicism. The Stoics recognized that avoiding all suffering is unrealistic. Everyone suffers. What matters is how we deal with it. Their response was to accept the suffering that cannot be changed and endure it with discipline. There is something admirable in that, but suffering is still treated basically as a necessary evil. It is endured, but it does not become something fruitful.

In the Old Testament, the Scriptures of Jesus, we also find different attempts to understand suffering. Some texts connect suffering with punishment for sin. Yet other parts of Scripture challenge that idea. The Book of Job gives us the story of a righteous man who has done nothing deserving of his suffering, and yet he suffers tremendously. Scripture itself therefore recognizes that suffering cannot simply be explained as punishment for bad behaviour.

Jesus gives us something different. The Gospel today comes immediately after the passage we heard last week, and the change is almost like whiplash. Peter had been put on a pedestal. He recognized Jesus as the Christ, and Jesus told him, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” He was given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. But now Peter has completely misunderstood what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah. Jesus explains that suffering will be part of his own mission. He will suffer and die. He will take upon himself the violence and evil of the world and transform it.

Jesus then teaches us that if we want to be his disciples, we cannot simply leave our crosses behind, ignore our suffering, or pretend that it is not there. When we accept our suffering with him, it can be transformed. Suffering by itself can be deeply harmful. If suffering is combined with isolation, bitterness, or resentment, it can grow inside us and spoil our hearts. But when suffering is joined to love, when it is carried with Christ and within community, it can become something different. It remains painful, but it can become life-giving.

We can think of the analogy of pruning. A knife can obviously cause harm. Yet in the hands of someone who knows how to prune a tree or plant properly, that same sharp instrument can help the plant grow more strongly and bear more fruit. Something similar can happen with suffering in our lives. When we carry it with Jesus, when we allow him to walk beside us, and when we endure it out of love for God and for others, suffering can begin to bear fruit.

All of us carry suffering of one kind or another, and Jesus does not ask us to ignore it. During this Mass, it might be important simply to name that suffering in our own hearts. What is the cross that I am carrying today? It might be a health problem that we are facing, or the illness of a family member or friend. It may be a challenge at work, difficulty finding employment, or the stress of going through an immigration process. It might be pain within a relationship that is breaking down even though we are trying hard to repair it. We all carry crosses, and Jesus invites us first to recognize that they are there.

Then we can ask a second question: what love can I bring into this suffering? If the cross involves work or financial difficulties, perhaps we continue out of love for our family or community. If we are struggling to heal a damaged relationship, perhaps the difficult work we do is offered out of love for the other person. Christ teaches us that suffering cannot always be avoided, but it can be joined to love, and when that happens it can be transformed.

I remember once hearing a priest say that we need to turn our crosses into crucifixes. I was struck by that expression. A cross by itself is simply two pieces of wood. Historically, it was an instrument of torture and execution. But a crucifix has Jesus upon it. To turn our cross into a crucifix means that we invite Jesus into our suffering. We allow him to be there with us, to walk with us, and to help us carry what we cannot carry alone. When Christ enters our suffering, it can become joined to his love and begin to bear life.

Today, then, let us recognize the crosses we carry and surrender them to the Lord. Let us ask for the grace not simply to endure them alone, but to bring Christ into them. May he help us transform our crosses into crucifixes, so that even our suffering, when joined to love, can become a source of life for us and for those around us.