Homily | September 13, 2026 | Forgiveness Is The Moment You Stop Counting (Episode 269)

There's one sentence in today's reading that's a bit strange.

It's not in the gospel.

The first reading, Serech, says, Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.

Hugs them.

What a strange word.

We hug our children, we hug someone we love, we hug something we're afraid to lose.

And scripture says that sometimes that's exactly what we do with our anger.

We hold it close.

That may be one of the most uncomfortable truths in all of today's readings.

Because there are wounds we desperately want God to heal.

But there are other wounds we have quietly learned to live with, maybe even depended upon.

We replay them in our heads, we rehearse the conversation we had, we remember exactly where we were when it was done to us.

We remember the tone, we remember who was there, we remember all the details.

We remember what we should have said.

And every time we tell the story again, we pick the wound up and hold it close.

After a while, resentment stops being merely something that happens to us.

It can become part of the way we understand ourselves.

I am the one who was betrayed.

I am the one that was abandoned.

I am the one who was treated unfairly.

This was done to me.

And once the wound becomes part of our identity, something very strange happens.

We begin to protect the very thing that is hurting us.

That's why today's gospel is about more than being nice.

Jesus is talking about freedom.

Peter comes to Jesus with a question.

How often must I forgive?

Seven times?

Peter wants a number.

And numbers are wonderful because numbers give us control.

Tell me exactly how many Christians, how much Christianity requires of me.

Tell me how many chances I have to give this person.

Tell me where's the boundary?

Tell me when have I done enough?

Then I can say I have fulfilled my obligation.

Now I'm entitled to my resentment.

But Jesus refuses to give Peter the number he wants.

Not seven times, but seventy-seven times, he says.

In other words, Peter stop counting.

Because forgiveness is not bookkeeping.

And then Jesus tells him a story.

A servant owes a king a debt so enormous that repayment is impossible.

The servant begs, but the king forgives everything, and the man walks out free.

Think about that.

He enters crushed beneath a debt he cannot possibly pay.

He leaves owing nothing.

You would think that that kind of mercy would change a man, but it does not.

Almost immediately he finds someone who owes him far less.

He grabs him by the throat, pay me what you owe me.

I think that's the tragedy of this parable.

The servant's circumstances changed.

The servant did not.

His debt disappeared.

His heart remained exactly the same.

He received mercy without becoming merciful.

And that should make us very uncomfortable.

Because apparently it is possible to spend your whole life close to the things of God and still resist becoming like God.

Resist becoming a Christian.

You can go to confession and still keep your list.

You can receive the Eucharist and still refuse to speak to someone.

You can pray, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, while spending years hugging the very resentment you're asking God to remove.

So perhaps the question is not simply, has God forgiven me?

Perhaps the more revealing question is, what has God's forgiveness done to me?

Has mercy changed the way I see people?

Has grace softened anything in me?

Am I becoming more merciful because I've encountered the mercy of God?

Because Christianity is not simply about receiving grace.

It's about grace changing the person who receives it.

And this is where forgiveness becomes difficult.

Because we often misunderstand it.

Forgiveness does not mean saying the wound was insignificant.

Some wounds are enormous.

They're real.

Some betrayals alter families.

Some relationships require boundaries in space.

Some relationships may never be restored, and that's okay.

Forgiveness does not mean forgetting.

It does not mean eliminate justice.

And it certainly does not require pretending that evil was good.

Forgiveness means something far more demanding.

It means what you did to me will not be allowed to decide what kind of person I become.

That's freedom.

You may have wounded me, you may have betrayed me, you may have disappointed me, but I refuse to give you permanent residence inside my heart.

I refuse to let what you did to me determine whether I become bitter or merciful.

I refuse to let the worst things that happen to me because of the most important thing about me.

And perhaps that's why Surach uses a strange word, we hug anger.

Because eventually God asks of us to open our arms.

And sometimes that's frightening.

Because if I release a resentment, who am I without it?

If I stop telling the story in my head, what happens to the identity I've built around being wronged?

If I forgive, does that mean the other person wins?

Well no.

It means the wound loses.

It means Christ wins.

Because now what happened to you no longer owns what happens next.

And I suspect that for some of us a name has already come to our mind.

We can see very clearly who that person is, the face, the conversation.

Perhaps something from last month, perhaps something from twenty years ago.

You've been carrying it for a long time.

Maybe something that no one else knows about.

But you know.

Jesus is not asking you today to pretend it never happened.

He's not asking you to feel differently on command.

He may simply be asking you one question.

Why are you still hugging it?

Because those hands were made to hold something else.

In a few moments you will come up that aisle and open them, and into your palm will be placed the body of Christ.

The same Christ who forgave from the cross.

The same Christ who refused to allow hatred to determine who he would become.

And perhaps that's the physical gesture tells us everything.

We cannot receive with clenched fist.

We have to have open hands.

Maybe that's what forgiveness looks like at first.

Not forgetting, not excusing, not even feeling better.

Just open hands.

Jesus, I've carried this too long.

I don't know how to forgive completely.

I'm not even sure I want to forgive.

But I want you to forgive me.

Teach me how to let go.

That's a prayer God can work with.

Because here's the great mistake we make about forgiveness.

We think it's primarily something we do for the person who hurt us.

Often forgiveness is the first act of freedom we do for ourselves.

As long as I need your apology before I can have peace, you still control part of my life.

As long as I need you to understand what you did to me before I can move forward, my future is still waiting on you.

As long as I keep rehearsing what happened, I keep giving yesterday permission to govern tomorrow.

And Christ wants more for you than that.

The betrayal does not get the final word, the divorce does not get the final word, the family wound does not get the final word, the broken relationship does not get the final word.

Even the injustice done to you does not get the final word.

Christ gets the final word and his mercy.

The miracle of forgiveness is not that the past changes, the past does not change.

You do.

The wound may always remain part of your story, but it does not have to write the ending.

So perhaps today, stop waiting for someone else to give you permission to be free.

Open your hands.

Give Christ what you have been hugging, and walk out of this church today a little freer than you walked in.

Because the person who hurt you has already taken enough from you.

Don't give them your future too.

Amen.