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Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sirach 27:33–28:9; Romans 14:7–9; Matthew 18:21–35
In 1999, a small village in East Timor was burned by pro-Indonesian militia.
A few months later, East Timor gained independence, and life slowly began to return to normal. Some of the militia also came back. The government dealt with the most serious offenders, but many who had committed smaller crimes, like burning houses or stealing, simply returned to the villages.
People were asked to forgive them.
One day, an old woman from that burned village asked me:
“How can I forgive them if they never asked for forgiveness? I see the men who burned my village passing by every week. But I do not see on their faces any sign that they are sorry.”
That question is not theoretical.
It is painful.
It is honest.
And it stands very close to today’s Gospel.
Peter asks Jesus:
“Lord, how often must I forgive my brother?”
Jesus answers with the parable of a servant who owed an impossible debt. He begged for patience, and the king forgave everything.
But then that same servant met another man who owed him a much smaller amount. The man used almost the same words:
“Have patience with me, and I will pay you.”
But the forgiven servant refused mercy.
He received forgiveness, but he did not become forgiving.
That is the wound at the center of the parable.
The old woman in East Timor was right to want truth. Without truth, forgiveness becomes cheap. Without repentance, reconciliation cannot be complete.
But Jesus is warning us about something else.
A person can be forgiven by God and still keep another person locked inside his anger.
A person can receive mercy and still refuse to show mercy.
A person can ask God to release him from his debt and still hold someone else by the throat.
Sirach says it clearly:
“Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.”
This does not mean that forgiveness is easy.
It does not mean that it happens quickly.
It does not mean that memory disappears.
Forgiveness is not forgetting.
Forgiveness is not saying, “It was nothing.”
Forgiveness is not allowing evil to continue.
Forgiveness means that I refuse to let hatred become the law of my heart.
Otherwise, it is going to shape how I speak, how I judge, how I pray, and how I treat others. Resentment can become a hidden master.
Christ came to free us from that master.
He died and rose so that sin would not have the final word: not the sin we committed, and not the sin committed against us.
In Christ, forgiveness is the beginning of freedom.
After that old woman spoke to me, I went to the local leaders. They called a meeting. They invited those who had taken part in burning the village.
The men stood up and said:
“We did wrong. We apologize. We are willing to repay as much as we can.”
Then the woman from the village stood up.
“You do not need to repay us. You are also poor. We have already received help from others. We only wanted to hear these words. From now on, you are forgiven. We hold nothing against you.”
That was not cheap forgiveness.
Truth was spoken.
Wrong was named.
Sorrow was expressed.
And only then could forgiveness be given.
Today’s Gospel does not give us an easy command.
It gives us a hard path.
But it is the path of Christ.
We have been forgiven much.
Now we ask for the grace not to remain prisoners of what others have done to us.
Whom do I still hold by the throat?
What truth still needs to be spoken?
Where do I need Christ to free my heart?
Forgiveness is hard.
But without it, the wound remains in command.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition,
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the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of
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