24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A September 13, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
Imagine for a moment that you were put in charge of the new spaceport being built in Pecan Island, overseeing billions of dollars of construction. Succeed and you’ll travel to the stars in splendor. Mess it up, though, and you’ll owe all that money back. Now, imagine that you get in over your head. You get careless and the whole thing blows up and it’s definitely your fault. You are now 10 billion dollars in debt. How would you pay it back? What if you begged for mercy and the owner looked at you and said, “you know what, I forgive you. You don’t have to pay back a single cent.” How would that feel? How would you respond? Would you then turn around and sue the owner’s cousin for $15,000 after you were just let off the hook for billions? What do you think the owner would do if he found out you were suing his cousin?
That’s what’s happening here. There are three translation problems though that make that harder to see. The first is that the servant owed “a huge amount.” Yeah, but how huge? The wording in the original Greek is “ten thousand talents.” A “talent” could mean as little as 75 pounds of silver or as much as 100 pounds of gold. Jesus is saying this man owes the king hundreds of thousands of pounds of precious metal. A talent was also equal to 20 years of salary, so you could say it was 200,000 years of salary. So yeah, 10 billion dollars.
The second translation problem is the “much smaller amount” this servant tries to collect from another servant. The literal Greek is “a hundred denarii,” about a pound of silver or 3 months of salary. So, when this servant sues the other guy, he’s chasing about $15,000 dollars after being let off the hook for 10s of billions. That’s why the king is so angry. It’s not just cruel, it’s stupid. But that’s what sin does to us.
The last translation problem is in the Our Father prayer. We say, “forgive us our trespasses.” When you trespass and get caught, what happens? “Get off my land!” You leave and there’s no lasting damage. In Matthew 6, Jesus literally says, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Jesus says to forgive debt, to forgive people who owe us something. Jesus often compares sin to debt, actually. If you trespass and I forgive you, I lose nothing. But if you owe me money and I forgive your debt, I lose that money forever. In other words, forgiveness costs us something. That’s why the Our Father is a dangerous prayer. We tell God that we don’t get forgiveness unless we are willing to lose something by forgiving what other people owe us.
When we sin against someone, when we hurt them, that puts us in spiritual debt. When someone hurts us, they owe us something. That’s why people want vengeance, why we say things like, “I’m going to get even with them” or, “I’m getting payback.” Usually, we want to see them suffer in some way. So, to forgive someone means to let go of that spiritual debt. Real forgiveness is not just words – “I forgive you” – it is accepting that this person cost you something you’ll won’t get back.
The amount of “spiritual debt” that comes from sin depends mostly on two things: what you did and who you did it do. For example, if you break a dog’s leg for no reason, it’s bad. If you break a person’s leg for no reason, it’s worse. Same act, greater debt. Why? Because a human being has greater dignity than a dog. Well, God’s dignity is infinitely more than a human being’s. That means that offending God is infinitely worse than offending a human being. It creates an infinite spiritual debt. So, no matter how much someone hurts you or offends you, you always owe more to God than that person owes to you.
This is why it’s so dumb to refuse to forgive someone. You gain infinitely more from God’s mercy than you lose by forgiving what another person owes you. It might help to imagine yourself at the final judgment. God is judging your worst enemy and he says to you, “do you want me to collect the spiritual debt that this person owes you?” What would you say? “Yes, he owes me so much, get him for it!” Do you know what God would say next? “Okay, I will, but now I’ll also collect what you owe me.” You get $15,000 but lose $10 billion. Yet, it’s worse than that. The money is an analogy. What Jesus actually says is that if we do not forgive others, we will be handed over to torturers. That is a good translation. At best, this means a very painful, very long time in purgatory, but it could mean hell.
So, instead of smugly demanding God make other people pay you back for hurting you, try to imagine yourself saying to God, “no, I forgive them for what they owe me and leave their judgment entirely up to you.” Now, God is just and he will right all wrongs in his own way, but the point is that you will not try to collect what they owe you. It’s to trust God’s justice instead of your own. That’s the deal. Choose to forgive others, to lose what they owe you and in exchange, you will be forgiven so much more. Lose $15,000, gain $10 billion.
It’s an obvious choice but that doesn’t make it an easy one. For one thing, it requires real faith. You can’t see what you owe God. You can’t see the splendor of heaven. You have to trust what God tells us through scripture, tradition, and the examples of the saints. Forgiveness is hard because it’s not natural. It is supernatural. So, ask for the faith to believe what’s at stake and the fortitude to make the choice.
It also helps to realize what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending that what they did to you “is no big deal.” No, it is a big deal. When you forgive someone, you do lose something. You can both forgive someone and acknowledge that what they did was awful.
Forgiveness doesn’t always mean reconciling with someone. If they aren’t sorry and are just going to deliberately hurt you again, you should maintain boundaries. You just need to be able to say “God, I choose not to claim the debt they owe me.” It also doesn’t mean you have to trust that person again even if they are sorry. Forgiveness is something you grant to a person whether or not they deserve it. But trust is earned. You must forgive them as soon as you can, but it’s okay to set reasonable expectations for how they can gradually rebuild the trust.
And forgiveness might need to be repeated. Every time you notice resentment coming back or that you’re holding old sins against someone, pray “In the name of Jesus, I forgive so-and-so for” whatever they did, “and I bless them.” Keep praying it until you mean it or you at least stop stewing in the resentment. The goal is complete forgiveness “from your heart,” but God is patient with us. It can be a gradual thing so long as we ask for his grace and don’t stop trying to reach that point.
So, when we come to the offertory today, I want you to think of someone you need to forgive – or maybe multiple people. Take whatever they owe you, whatever hurt they caused and place it on the altar with the bread and wine. Tell God “I let go of this debt, I give it to you in this Mass.” Then, when we pray the Our Father, try to picture them when you say “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Try to forgive them in that moment and mean it.
The psalm today tells us, “as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness” toward those who obey him. Obey God, then, remembering the infinite debt you owe to him. Forgive seventy-seven times and more the much smaller debts owed to you. Forgive so that you might be forgiven, raised from the dead, and lifted higher than the heavens to a splendor greater than all the gold in the universe: eternal life and perfect love with the God who thinks that, even in your worst moment and your worst sin, you are with dying for.