Is forgiveness another name for the sacrament more formally known as Penance?  Well, yes, but the Eucharist is our premier sacrament of Reconciliation.  Baptism, too, accomplishes the forgiveness of sin.

Is forgiveness a matter of mending the breach between you and me, or us and God?  Frankly, both. It’s also a matter of mending the tear between my true self and the false self I often inhabit.  Is forgiveness a spiritual issue, or a psychological one?  Again, it’s both.  Forgiveness also has a physical dimension, because of the gnawing consequences of unforgiveness which can break the health of mind and body.  It also has a social dimension: patterns of unforgiveness can affect families and communities for many generations.  Far from being a short subject, the matter of forgiveness becomes a fundamental and critical subject with ramifications at every level of human experience.

Jesus refuses to consider forgiveness in terms of what’s reasonable or even humanly possible.  When Jesus tells the parable about the servant forgiven a great debt, He says nothing at all about how long to forgive someone who offends, or even how to do it, period.  The emphasis in the parable is not on the mechanics of forgiveness, but only on the motivation for it.  We must forgive our fellow human beings many more times than seven times, not because they deserve it, but because we ourselves have been forgiven a king’s ransom.

Jesus insists that our obligation to forgive matches the generosity we have received, which in incalculable.  We mustn’t waste time debating about who did what to whom, and how often.  Yes, there may be pain and anger, and certainly there can be just cause for grievance.  Jesus doesn’t argue those points.  Worrying about those components, will never free us to do the one thing we are expected to do as servants relieved of all our debts.  Infinitely more important is to forgive our debtors, free and clear.

Prepare the Word and Fr. Lloyd Baugh, S.J.