Pardon, if you want to be pardoned

24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Sir 27:30 – 28:7
Second Reading: Rom 14:7-9
Gospel Reading: Mt 18:21-35

“If one has no mercy toward another like oneself, can one then seek pardon for one’s own sins?” This is the question in this Sunday’s First Reading. Jesus gives the answer in the Gospel Reading: No!

We acknowledge this truth every time we say the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” (Notice that there is no comma before “as.”)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls this petition “astonishing.” If we were merely asking God to forgive us, it would be understandable, for Christ suffered and died “that sins may be forgiven.” However, in the second clause, we acknowledge that God will not hear our petition unless we meet the strict requirement of forgiving those who offend us.

We begin the Lord’s Prayer with confidence, calling God “Father.” Then we return to him like the prodigal son, admitting that we are sinners and begging forgiveness like the tax collector.

However (the Catechism calls this “daunting”), God’s mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we refuse to forgive our brothers and sisters, for that refusal closes our hearts and makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love.

The “as” clause is so important that Jesus returned to it at the end of the Our Father: “If you forgive the faults of others, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours. If you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you.”

This use of the word “as” is not unique in Jesus’ teaching. He also said, “You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”; “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you.”

In other words, we are to be like God.

If you have ever tried, seriously, to forgive someone who has offended you deeply, with no excuse, you know how difficult it is. If you have not, try to imagine now that your spouse has committed adultery and abandoned you. How can you possibly forgive?

You cannot do it “by imitating the divine model from outside,” the Catechism says; “there has to be a vital participation, coming from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God.”

This is impossible for humans, but “with God all things are possible,” the Catechism says. “Only the Spirit by whom we live can make ours the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. Then the unity of forgiveness becomes possible and we find ourselves forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave us.” Only thus can “the Lord’s words on forgiveness, the love that loves to the end, become a living reality.”

Jesus ends his parable with the words: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” It is “in the depths of the heart” that everything is either resented and bound or forgiven and loosed. It is beyond our power not to feel or to forget an offence, the Catechism says, “but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.”

During his public life Jesus not only forgave sins, but also made it clear what forgiveness entails. For example, the Catechism says, he ate and drank with “sinners,” thus expressing both God’s forgiveness and their return “to the bosom of the People of God.”

Our forgiveness must extend to all people, no matter how great their offences, even if they remain our “enemies,” Christ noted, for there is no limit to God’s forgiveness.

“There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest,” the Catechism says. It follows, therefore, that there is no offence too serious for us to forgive in others.