This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
Jesus makes His point very well in today’s Gospel. The servant who refuses to be patient with payback of a tiny loan from his fellow servant, immediately after receiving complete forgiveness for a massive loan by his own master, seems to us absurd, repugnant, beyond unreasonable–and so it must have seemed to Jesus’ listeners.
So, why is it so hard for us to forgive those who offend us? When we become enraged or resentful, why don’t we see ourselves in the same absurd light as we see this servant? It is simple: Either we don’t appreciate the enormity of the debt we ourselves have been forgiven, or we don’t trust that in fact it has been forgiven.
We are so accustomed, albeit unconsciously, to seeing God in a relative manner, as one more element of our lives, as one more duty to be dispensed. But God doesn’t see things that way. From His point of view, He is our all in all; He is our Alpha and Omega, our Beginning and End; He envisions us wrapped up in the vary same fibers of union with Him that unite the Trinity.
Thus, the original sin of Adam, which we all inherited at birth, and our individual sins are not just little tantrums to be waved off with a laugh, if we are to believe Jesus’s message in today’s Gospel. The enormity of their import comes from their threefold offense against the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
When we sin, we reject God our Father, our Creator, the very source of our being. Thus we reject our own essence and being at its very roots. When we sin, we reject God the Son, who dragged a bloody cross up Calvary hill, falling with it three times but persevering, ultimately pouring out His blood and accepting death on the cross to give us back that being, to give us back our fulfillment. And when we sin, we reject God the Holy Spirit, who Himself constitutes the union of the Blessed Trinity–we violate that vision of our incorporation into that union that is God’s vision for us. We violate the most sacred intimacy that is God Himself.
When we meditate on our sin, we should not so much meditate on the despicable acts or omissions in our lives themselves, merely to contemplate their innate ugliness–we should meditate on the beauty, the glory, the grandeur, the love, the intimacy of the One we have offended and of His dreams for our destiny incorporated into the heart of Himself. And the price He paid to get rid of that enormous debt for us.
And then drink deeply of the certainty that because of that price He paid, through the sacraments of baptism and confession, that debt is well and truly gone. Completely gone.
And then contemplate our petty grievances with our neighbor. They are as comparatively unimportant as we are small compared to God. We feel them deeply and mightily. But compared to our grievances against God, they are absurdly tiny.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Hold a crucifix, or look at one on a wall, and consider that the one crucified, paying the price for you, is the absolute Master of the Universe, voluntarily made vulnerable. Consider the enormity of even small careless rejections of this great Master. Then, consider that this crucifix has wiped that debt away. Finally, look directly at the offenses that habitually make you most resentful against your neighbor. And likewise wipe them away; give them in complete freedom to this great God on the cross, even if it seems to mean that you feel them all the more bitterly.
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