24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A September 13, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Video of 8am Mass: https://youtu.be/hHtJFTsW-iU
How did this guy even get into that much debt? Jesus tells us the man owed his king a “huge amount.” That’s a loose translation, it’s actually 10,000 talents. A talent is worth about 6,000 denarii. A single denarius is the amount of money a laborer earns in a single day. That means this huge amount is what someone would earn by working for 60 million days. If you do some division and throw in some modern-day equivalents, that “huge amount” comes out to about 5 billion dollars. And that’s using some numbers on the low side.
So, how did this king’s servant even manage to get into that kind of debt? What kind of king or businessman would loan 5 billion dollars to a single servant or employee? And then, when the man asks for time to pay it back – which would take about160,000 years – the king simply forgives the debt. Either this king is incredibly foolish and gullible, or he is inordinately generous and extraordinarily wealthy.
Yet this servant, seemingly unphased by the benevolence of his king, decides to aggressively collect on his own loan of a “much smaller amount.” That number is 100 denarii – the amount a full-time worker could make in 100 days… let’s say $10,000 in today’s terms. This guy just escapes $5 billion in debt only to turn around to imprison his coworker for a paltry $10,000. He was neither very generous in the loan – anyone who has bought a car or house has easily gotten bigger loans – nor understanding of the reasonable need for some time to pay it back.
And you know what? The reality is even more extreme. God has given us more than $5 billion; he has given us our very existence. Being religious – or even “spiritual” – is not a matter of “liking” God or prayer or anything of the sort. It’s recognizing the reality that we are in debt. We owe God everything. And when we fail to pay that unpayable debt and ask to be forgiven, we are. Not only that, we are actually given another loan, another chance to make good use of the infinitely valuable gift of our lives, our intelligence, our free will.
And do you know how God wants us to use it? To repay him? To become like him. Most kings want grateful servants but God goes further. He wants us to rule with him. Although we’ll never be equal to God, he nonetheless invites us to reign with him, to share eternal bliss in heaven, and most importantly, to share in his ability to love.
That’s why it matters what we do to others. That’s why trying to collect a debt after we’ve been forgiven is so egregious. Even if we only think about the exchange rate – forgive $10,000 to get back $5 billion – it’s makes plenty of sense; Jesus is appealing to simple logic here. But he’s also appealing to a deeper truth. God doesn’t want time or money or fame, he wants you. He doesn’t want you like a pet or a trophy, he wants you to be like him: generous, loving, powerful, yet humble.
It’s why God established a Church. It’s why God always worked with a family, a nation, a people instead of just individuals. God gives us other people precisely so we can learn to love like him. He generously gives to those who cannot repay him – us – so he gives us plenty of people to love, most of whom cannot repay us. Getting to heaven is not about passing a test and getting a reward, it is about becoming a certain kind of person. Our happiness is not what we have, but who we are. And eternal happiness comes from being like God, from being able to love like him, even to the point of death.
And that is hard. In fact, it’s impossible. After original sin, human nature was corrupted, and every child inherits that corruption from their parents. We still have the gift of intelligence and free will, but now we are plagued by temptation until we die. Easily misled and full of weakness, we simply cannot love like God because we either lose sight of the truth or lack the strength to live it. Even after baptism, we often fall prey to sin. Even when we avoid major sins with God’s help, we often remain lukewarm and incomplete in our love of others. So we need forgiveness again and again. God will give it to us on one condition: that we forgive others.
There are two basic obstacles for us to do this: not knowing the truth and not being able to live it. Not knowing is more than just remembering words or phrases. It’s a deeper kind of knowledge: understanding and integrating that knowledge so that it’s not just a fact, but part of how you think. That requires you to study the truth, to meditate upon it, to base your prayers upon it.
Perhaps the most common lie to get past is this: “forgive and forget.” You know what the Church actually says? “It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense.” Your salvation does not depend on a bad memory, but on a good will. You have to forgive everyone, but you don’t have to trust everyone. Remembering that they’ve hurt you is not failing to forgive.
The second obstacle – of being unable to do what we know is right – is connected to this. Even if we know we don’t have to forget, we still struggle to get past our feelings of hurt and anger to forgive. Remember, “it is not in our power not to feel.” Feelings are often beyond our control, but they don’t have to control us. They make it hard to forgive, but not impossible. And the fact that we still feel the pain or anger does not mean we haven’t forgiven.
As the catechism puts it “the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.” Turning hurt into intercession… It is a process. You are hurt. You are angry. While still angry and in pain, you choose to say, “I forgive.” Every time you remember the hurt, you make the choice again. Use the pain as a reminder to pray for the offender, for their repentance, for the grace to forgive and not retaliate.
Do not let the lies blind you or the pain stop you. God has given more than any king and will forgive you anything you ask on one condition. That you forgive, that you keep forgiving, that you never stop forgiving. That includes criminals and cowards, friends and family; priests, bishops, and popes; reporters and politicians… everyone. Is it worth it to be right, to get revenge, to tear them down… is your grudge worth $5 billion? Is it worth eternal life?