Setting Our Limits

We must have heard this a million times already.

Not today’s Gospel passage itself.

But its basic message.

That message is repeated three times in today’s Gospel.

First when Jesus answers Peter.

Saying that we must forgive our brother not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Second, in Jesus' parable where the master says:

Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?

And a third time, when Jesus confirms the warning message of the parable:

… my heavenly Father [will not forgive] you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart.

In some translations, the seventy-seven times is presented as seven times seventy times.

Or 490 times, if you take it literally.

But of course, it's not meant as a precise number.

We don't need to keep a scorecard.

It's meant to represent a great number of times, perhaps an infinite number of times.

The way we might today say, a thousand times or a million times.

There are numerous Gospel references to the requirement that we forgive others.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.

We hear these passages and similar ones dozens of times throughout the year.

But we're warned of the necessity of forgiving others far more often than that.

We hear it—actually we say it—every time we pray the Our Father.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And that language, in today's Gospel passage and in the Our Father,

Really makes the point.

God forgives us as we forgive others.

So we have the opportunity to set our own limit

on the number of times we'll want God to forgive us.

What limit can we dare to impose?

Seven times?

Seventy-seven times?

Four hundred ninety times?

I'd feel more comfortable with that million number.

And not the literal million—the figurative, infinite million.

God's infinite mercy gives us cause for great hope.

Tuesday,  3rd Week of Lent

Mt 18:21-35                                 Read this Scripture @usccb.org