Reflection by Rev. Leonard N. Peterson
When it happened to me, it felt like what I imagine a heart attack might feel like. Sudden, surprising, painful. The pain came from information relayed by a person who was, at the time, one of our diocesan officials in the clergy office. He told me what another priest had said in a negative critique of me. The assessment came from someone I happened to admire. Hearing his judgment of me hurt doubly for that very reason.
While this took place many years ago, the incident springs to mind immediately whenever I think of our good Lord’s admonition found in today’s Gospel: “So will my heavenly Father do to you unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”
Boy, is that hard to do sometimes! There have been similar examples in my life, but the one I cited stands out the most because of the hurt. After that wears off with time, a certain justifiable anger can still well up within us. We start creating a line of defense witnesses as we put the offending one on an imaginary trial in the courtroom of our minds.
In His human nature, Our Lord knew all about such hurt and anger. After all, He was like us in all things but sin. But listen again to those words of His as He hung, the victim of hate, on that Roman cross of pain and punishment: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So, despite any and all efforts we might make to get out from under this teaching of His—and some of us are quite clever about that—we must either obey Him or walk away. It’s the biggest mistake any of us can make, once we know and believe Him to be the Son of God: the One who really practiced what He preached, the One who loves us despite ourselves.
Once upon a time, a friend of Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, reminded her of an especially cruel thing that had been done to her years before. But Miss Barton seemed not to recall it.
“Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked.
“No,” came the reply. “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”
You can’t be free and happy if you harbor grudges, so put them away. Get rid of them. Collect postage stamps or collect coins, or model trains, if you wish—but don’t collect grudges.
God love you as you collect new graces in your life.
Rev. Peterson’s Reading & Gospel Summary
Reading I: Sirach 27:30–28:7
Realize that keeping the Commandments is certainly an activity of lasting value. Only a sinner will cling to anger and vengeance. The good man practices forgiveness and thus prepares for the end of his life on earth.
Reading II: Romans 14:7-9
Our highest aim in life is to please Jesus Christ because we belong to Him. He “purchased” us at the cost of His precious blood.
The Gospel: Matthew 18:21-35
Jesus speaks of the limitless (“70 x 7”) times we need to forgive. Mercy is the choice a true disciple makes toward his neighbor’s faults. In the parable, the king’s mercy is always “from the heart.” (N.B. A “talent” is equal to 20 years’ wages for a laborer.)