First of all, I must admit I did not use AI to strip out all the punctuation, spacing, etc. from the Sunday Gospel. I did test it, but decided not to use AI in the end. On the one hand, slowing down and doing the work is good for me. On the other, it allows me to already begin praying with the text as I “reverse engineer” it.
I’ll share my personal reflection momentarily. With lectio, however, it’s important to begin with the literal sense. What’s the text saying in itself? Sunday’s Gospel comes to us from Matthew 18:21–35. It opens with Peter’s question regarding how many times he needs to forgive someone for an offense. Peter asks if seven times suffices. According to The Jerome Biblical Commentary, the number seven refers to a definite number, but not necessarily a specified number. Jesus responds by multiplying seven (whether it is seventy-seven or seventy times seven depends on the translation), thus making the number indefinite. “No definite number makes forgiveness perfect.” We’re talking quality not quantity. All of this has the effect of denoting a limitless mercy — infinitely perfect forgiveness — and it reverses the limitless vengeance of Gen 4:24 (“If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times”). Jesus gives a new law and vengeance has no place in it. Additionally, mere lip-service won’t cut it when it comes to forgiveness. No. You have to forgive your brother from the bottom of your heart. Our hearts are bottomless, limitless longing for the infinite (think: “restless till they rest in God,” or that image of our hearts having a God-sized hole in them that only God can fill). Bottomless hearts must offer bottomless, limitless forgiveness.
Next, Jesus illustrates his teaching with the parable of the unmerciful servant. When it comes to the two debts described in the parable, one must note the order of magnitude. The wicked servant owed the king 10,000 talents, which is equivalent to 6,000 denarii (20 years wages). This would have been completely impossible to repay. The servant of the unmerciful servant owed the wicked man 100 denarii, or about 100 days’ wages. Repayment would have taken time and required patience, but it was well within the realm of possibility. A debt far exceeding one’s ability to repay it on one hand, and a doable debt on the other.
The king, who has clearly been patient with his servant already, doesn’t only have patience (which would have allowed for a just repayment) but mercy: He forgives the entire, unpayable debt. The wicked servant, taking full advantage of his new financial freedom, goes right to the jugular in his unrelenting hunt to “get ahead” and become “bulletproof.” His merciless treatment of his own servant provoked the ire of his peers, who reported the whole affair to the king. The rest is history.
The point of the parable should be fairly clear: one who is forgiven a great (i.e., eternal) debt should forgive the much smaller debts of others. One whose sins have been forgiven by God must forgive the sins of others.1
Prayerful Reading
Next, I’d like to share some of my own reflection on this Gospel. First, I got hung up on this line:
HESEIZEDHIMANDSTARTEDTOCHOKEHIM
“Choke him.” It’s so gruesome. So violent. Reading the passage slowly highlights the brutality, especially in light of the wicked servant’s just having been forgiven. It’s fairly shocking. Well, it shocked me. I guess I’d never really thought about or imagined what the scene would have looked like.
I’ve been reflecting on that verb “to choke” in light of unforgiveness. It is an apt word, I think. To be unforgiving is to be grudge-holding and resentful, all of which collectively acts as a stranglehold on a relationship—suffocating it. Sometimes grudge-holding manifests itself in blatant wrath (like we see in the physical image of choking someone), but more often than not the “choking” looks a lot like avoidance, silent treatment, passive aggression, envy, backbiting, backstabbing, and all the other insidious things we’re capable of doing.
There’s one way to stop choking another: let go. Just let go. Surrender. Relinquish. Release. Forgive. To forgive is to let go, to release a person (and their reputation in your mind) from your sentence, to relinquish your inability to see the person for anything other than their fault.
Unforgiveness = choking the relationship (or the ability to be in relationship)
Forgiveness = letting go, allowing the relationship to breathe again
Forgiveness is basically my free decision — it cannot be forced — to relinquish the desire for vengeance. It’s a decision to see the other person as a person again. Instead of seeing the other as a non-person, the cause of my hurt, the sum of their sins, and so on, I make an act of the will, a choice, to see the other first and foremost as another human person. I give the person back him or herself, completely. That’s what the word means etymologically: to completely give. Forgiving the other does not mean excusing or implicitly condoning the wrongful action as “okay.” Forgiving the other does not mean that the pain caused by the offense vanishes, nor does it mean one should stuff away feelings or suppress memories. It doesn’t even mean reconciliation is even possible or necessary. Forgiveness justly acknowledges the truth by acknowledging the wrong as wrong. But it does not stop there. Forgiveness is an act of mercy springing from the depths of one’s heart, the depths that have first been touched by God’s merciful initiative. Forgiveness means completely giving the other his or her personhood again. It’s giving life not taking it.
In my lectio, I also got stuck on the last few lines of the Gospel reading:
INANGERHISMASTERHANDEDHIMOVERTOTHETORTURERSUNTILHESHOULDPAYBACKTHEWHOLEDEBTSOWILLMYHEAVENLYFATHERDOTOYOUUNLESSEACHOFYOUFORGIVESYOURBROTHERFROMYOURHEART
The wicked servant owed an unpayable amount. Consequently, he’ll be paying for his sin forever. Then, in the last line, Jesus snaps out of the parable and directs the whole thing to us. To me. To you. “Unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.” Unless you do this, you will be handed over to the torturers forever. It’s rather formidable.
The whole parable acts as a kind of commentary for that other formidable line, the one appearing in the Our Father: “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). In fact, it helps to round out the line from the Our Father and ensures that we see God as the first mover. The king forgives first. God forgives first. Therefore, we are to forgive. But the twofold reality, here, is tightly wound: You are to forgive because you’ve been forgiven by God, but he will only forgive you to the degree in which you forgive others.
In light of this, I think we could tweak Dorothy Day’s line that “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least,” to “I am really only forgiven by God as much as I forgive the person I resent the most.” And this makes me feel very uncomfortable. How about you?
Please use the comments to share your own lectio reflections if you’d like. It’s always a blessing to experience lectio within community.
In addition to the Jerome Commentary, I also pulled some notes from the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible.
Besides the BIG lesson on forgiveness, the line of “then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers UNTIL he should pay back the whole debt” stands out to me.
It seems like this is an allusion to purgatory. We will have to make payment for our unforgiveness here on earth. Better to forgive now then pay the price later.