The question that opens today’s gospel: “How many times must I forgive the offenses of my brother or sister? Seven times?” reveals that Peter already knows that Jesus intends to go beyond the limits set by the scribes.
He certainly remembers what has been said in the Sermon on the Mount: “If you are about to offer your gift at the altar, and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift in front of the altar, go at once and make peace with your brother and then come back and offer your gift to God” (Matthew 5:23-24). He also presents another unequivocal statement of Jesus: “If your brother offends you seven times in one day, but seven times he says to you, “I’m sorry”, forgive him” (Luke 17:3-4).
The answer of Jesus goes beyond that: “No, not seven times (that is always) but seventy times seven.” To clarify his thoughts, he tells a parable.
A debtor who owes ten thousand talents is presented to the king. The talent is about thirty-six kilogrammes of gold; its value multiplied by ten thousand—the most elevated figure of the Greek language—amounted to a huge sum that corresponds to the salary of 200,000 years of work. It is unthinkable that someone could repay such amount.
Showing a generosity without limits, the master of the parable, who represents God, touched by the plight of his servant, condones all the debt. There is no sin that God cannot forgive; there is no fault superior to his immense love.
In the second part of the story another servant who owes the first hundred denari enters. It is a considerable sum equivalent to the 100 working days but paltry compared with that condoned by the king.
The second debtor uses the same prayer to his colleague hoping to get the same compassion. The merciless servant, however, grabs him by the neck and begins to choke him, saying: give me what you owe!
The central message of the parable is to be sought in the huge disproportion between the two debts, and in the stark contrast between the behaviour of God who always forgives and that of the man who refuses to forgive.
With the parable, Jesus is interested in highlighting the enormous distance that exists between God’s heart and men’s.
We ask the Father to “forgive our debt” in prayer. What does God expect from us? His very own “compassion”: He wants that we do not keep the brother a slave of his past or take his breath away while he desperately tries to rise up from the chasm.
God asks us to help him seventy times seven, renouncing to any recourse against him. They understood that “love does not delight in wrong, excuses everything, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:5-7).
Whoever has owned this new logic is willing to lose, to forget all his own rights just to see again his brother happy, peaceful and free from his sin.
Father Fernando Armellini SCJ
Claretian Publications (bibleclaret.org)
Translated by Father John Ledesma SDB
Abridged by Father Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF
