Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full

14 AUGUST (Mt 18,21-9,1)

The Church of Lord Jesus lives of mercy, forgiveness, compassion, remittance of every fault and debt. The Christian charity toward others is by divine command unlimited, infinite, always and forever. A disciple of Jesus that does not forgive, does not condone, does not remits debts against him, he is certainly not a perfect imitator of his Teacher, who not only forgave sinners, that is, the whole world; he also atoned for their sins, loading on his back the pain due to them by divine justice. Not only must the disciple of Jesus forgive, he must also atone for sin. He must remove sin and pain from the world giving his life for them.

The rule of mercy applies for the heavenly Father and for every one of his children: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”God is merciful and we must be merciful. He is holy and we must be holy. He is compassionate and we have to be compassionate. He is perfect and we have to be perfect. If we are not merciful, holy, pious, perfect not even He can be merciful, holy, merciful and perfect to us. Our human counterpart is missing. This is the law of mercy and charity. If a man does not add his mercy to that of the heavenly Father, not even the Heavenly Father might be merciful to us. He would not be faithful to his Word anymore. Now God is always faithful to his every Word.

Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.” When Jesus finished these words, he left Galilee and went to the district of Judea across the Jordan.

Every man has a contract with God a priceless and infinite debt. Not even if it gave his whole life he might be able to satisfy his debt. Our life is finite, the debt is infinite. But not even we can deserve something, because we are only debtors, that is sinners and a sin cannot have merit with God. But God in his infinite and eternal mercy, for the paschal mystery of Jesus the Lord, forgives our debt, remits that large not payable sum. What does he ask in return? That man remits that little, insignificant change that his brother owes him.

We forgive the very little and God forgives a great deal. We delete an insignificant debt, God deletes a very heavy debt. A truth must be proclaimed immediately: we are all debtors before God. There is not one man who has not contracted this debt. Only Jesus and Mary are excluded because they were born without original sin. If we do not enter into this ontological truth, we are easily led to believe that there is no debt of ours with God and we can put our brothers in jail for a few dollars they owe us. It is necessary to be aware of our reality as sinners to be able to dispose us to all kind of forgiveness so that the Father grants us his.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints give us the truth of our lives.