The Grudge that Owns You

The name of the Father, and some of the Holy Spirit,

glory to Jesus Christ. In today's Gospel, our Lord gives

us one of the most striking parables in all of Scripture,

the parable of the unforgiving servant. In the Gospel Today,

a king calls his servants to account, and one is

brought before him, who owes ten thousand talents. Now, that

amount is almost impossible to comprehend. Even the most conservative

estimates who have tried to translate that to a figure today,

tells us that ten thousand talents today would be billions

of dollars. And the Lord's point in this parable is

very simple. This debt is so enormous that there's absolutely

no possibility of repayment. It is hopeless. And yet when

the servant falls to the ground and begs for mercy,

the king does something astonishing. He does not merely grant

him more time to pay. He doesn't give him a

plan to pay. He doesn't reduce the debt to a

payable amount. Instead, he forgives it entirely, every penny or

every denari. The fathers tell us that this immense debt

represents our sins before God, as saint Augustine notes the

ten thousand talents signify the countless ways in which man

transgress us is God's commandments. Every day we stand before

God unable to repay what we owe. We cannot undo

our sins, we cannot earn our salvation, we can't balance

out the scales of debt through our own efforts. Yet

the mercy, the measure of God's mercy, is greater than

the measure of our sin. Saint John Christystem marvels at

this generosity. The servant only asked for patience, but he

received a complete remission. He asked for time, and he

was given forgiveness. Such is the love of God. He's

always more ready to forgive than we are to ask.

This is beautiful and reassuring to all of us who struggle.

What a loving and merciful God we have. But this

is only the first half of the parable, because the

forgiven servant then immediately encounters a fellow servant who owes

him a hundred dinari. And this is nothing, but compared

to ten thousand talents, it's insignificant. But instead of showing

the same mercy that he himself had just received, he

grabs a man by the throat, and he demands payment.

The very one who had been forgiven an unimaginable debt

refuses to forgive a comparatively tiny one. And this is

where the Gospel starts being a story about someone else,

and it becomes a story about us. The obvious question

is how do we respond when others offend us or

transgress against us. Every one of us has been hurt

by somebody else. Every one of us has experienced insults, betrayal, slander, disappointment,

broken promises, even just unkind words. And some wounds are

small and some cut very deep. Yet Christ teaches us

that no matter how great the injury may be, it

is still small compared to what God has forgiven us.

And there's another lesson here that is perhaps less obvious.

Noticed the attitude of the first servant when he stood

before the king. He fell down, He humbled himself, He

confessed his helpless condition, and he acknowledged his debt. Before

he ever received forgiveness, he recognized his own need for mercy.

Saint John Christen says that Christ requires two things from us,

First that we condemn our own sins, and second that

we forgive others theirs. The first is meant to make

the second one easier. The man who remembers his own

failures becomes more patient with the failures of others. The

man who remembers how often he has been forgiven becomes

more willing to forgive. When we can remember our own plight,

face down before the Almighty God, begging the remission of

our own sins, it becomes much harder to condemn the

one who has offended us. And this is why genuine

repentance and genuine forgiveness always go together. A person who's

constantly examining his own soul finds it difficult to remain

harsh towards a neighbor. But a person who forgets his

own sin quickly becomes a severe judge of everybody else's.

The saint doesn't think, look how terrible everyone else is.

The saint thinks, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner,

and from that humility springs our own mercy. Yeah, the

Lord goes even further. He does not merely say that

we must forgive. He says we must forgive from our hearts.

And this is a rightening phrase, because we all know

how to forgive with our lips. We can say the words.

We can maintain outward civility when we pass in the halls,

we can avoid arguments, but deep within we may still

rehearse in our mind the old wounds, the old grievances,

the old injuries, and nurture those old resentments, because Christ

is asking from us something much deeper than just external politeness.

Blessed the all Flack says, he wants us to forgive

from our hearts and not only from our lips. Understanding

what a great evil is remembrance of wrongs, since it

revokes the gift of God. The real danger is not

merely anger. The real danger is keeping anger. It's the

deliberate preservation of the old wounds. Listen to Saint John

Crusistm's warning. He says that when we refuse to forgive,

we thrust the sword into ourselves. The person who injured

us may have caused pain, but we continue that suffering

when we nourish that resentment. The offender may have struck once,

but our bitterness wounds us every single day as we

hold on to it, and the devil delights in convincing

us that holding a grudge is a form of justice.

We often even excuse our own unwillingness to forgive as

part of God's justice, or is necessary for the rehabilitation

of another. I can't forgive him until he's really made

a change. But in reality, it's just a prison for

our own soul. How so, you might ask, well, John

Grisassum says that those who wrong us can become occasions

for our salvation. Every insult gives us an opportunity for patients,

every offense an opportunity for mercy, and every injury chance

to immtite Christ himself, who prayed for his enemies even

as they crucified him. This doesn't mean that pretending evil

never that pretending This doesn't mean pretending that evil never happened.

It doesn't mean a proving sin. It doesn't mean abandoning

our own discernment. But what it means is we surrender

our claim to vengeance and place the judgment into the

hands of God. We forgive because we ourselves have been forgiven.

Brothers and sisters. As we stand here again before the

Holy altar, let us remember the servant's posture before the king.

Let us fall down before God with humility. Let us

examine our consciences honestly and let us confess our sins

and seek his mercy. And when we have received that mercy,

then we are called to extend it to others. And

that forgiveness will not be merely with our lips, but

it must be from our hearts. Let Us put away

remembrance of wrongs. Let us release old grudges and old resentments.

Let us show to those who have sinned against us

the same compassion that we beg the Lord to show

to us. For we're all debtors before a merciful King,

and the measure of our forgiveness towards others reveals whether

we truly understand the forgiveness that we ourselves have received.

So may the Lord grant us repentant hearts, merciful hearts,

and forgiving hearts, and may we receive the abundant mercy

of the King who forgives debts beyond all measure. In

the name of the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit,

a man glory to Jesus Christ.