24th Sunday in ordinary time
As we come to another weekend we have many people and things to pray for. We remember the people of Morocco after the devastating earthquake as well as the flood hit areas of Libya. We pray for the people of these countries as well as all those involved in the rescue efforts. Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is all about forgiveness. The parable of the unforgiving official is told in order to underline our need for forgiveness. When the king calls his court officials to audit the accounts, one shows a deficiency of ten thousand talents, a colossal sum of money. The sum is deliberately extravagant, running into millions of pounds, to heighten the contrast with the few pounds owed to the official. When the king orders the sale of the debtor and his family into slavery, the official pleads for time. The king feels sorry for him and decides to remit the whole of the vast debt.
The official, however, learns nothing from his experience, for he refuses to give a colleague time to pay a trifling debt; instead, he has him thrown into prison. When this heartless behaviour is reported to the king, the grant of full forgiveness is withdrawn and the unforgiving official is thrown to the torturers. What do we learn from this parable about showing mercy? The saying goes that the mercy we show to others will also be the mercy that will be shown to us . We often forget that God showed us mercy In the same way that the king showed mercy to the official! If we think we do not need the mercy of God we need to stop for all of us need forgiveness and mercy in one way or another. I am sure you have found yourself in a situation like I have where it was difficult to forgive someone who offended you all of us have been in that situation at some time in our lives. Forgiveness can be very hard sometimes, and for this reason it takes a long time before we bring ourselves to forgive those who sin against us especially when it might be someone we trusted a lot.
In this Gospel Jesus tells us that God’s forgiveness has necessary limits, but perhaps these are just the limits we set by what we do and say. The unforgiving slave brings judgment on himself by treating his own forgiveness as a license to bring judgment on others which it was not. He thus transforms a merciful king into a vengeful judge by his actions. The problem lies not with the king, or even by analogy with God, but with the world the slave insists on constructing for himself, under which terms his fate is now set. The moral of the parable is that God is merciful and forgiving to those who practice mercy and forgiveness. The cost of human forgiveness is insignificant compared with the cost of Divine forgiveness. Let us ask the Lord for forgiveness for all our sins. Let us also forgive all those who have sinned against us in word or deed because that is what our father in heaven asks us to do in this gospel story. Let us pray that the lord will show us his loving mercy and grant us his saving help as we move forward in faith and hope.
Fullerton T 