Readings of the day: Daniel 3:25, 34-43; Psalm 25:4-5ab, 6, 7bc, 8-9; Matthew 18:21-35
Have you ever found yourself caught
between wanting to forgive somebody generously, as Jesus asks of us in today’s
Gospel reading, and wanting to hold this person to account? Our Christian
faith, based on our Scriptures, invites us to do both: forgive generously and
hold one another to account for right and wrong. But how do we both forgive
generously and safeguard accountability?
Jesus says to Peter in Matthew’s Gospel:
Forgive “not seven times but seventy-seven times.” In other words, mirror God’s
infinite forgiveness by forgiving one another infinitely and without
calculation. But does not this call to infinite forgiveness pose problems for
us and for our culture?
The first problem is captured in a neat
but flawed little phrase. Who here has ever heard, “Forgive and forget”? To
“forgive and forget” is not God’s way. It is not the way of our Christian
faith. To “forgive and forget” is not what Jesus asks of Peter in our Gospel
reading and of us. Sin hurts, and so it should. Sin causes a breakdown of
trust; a breakdown of relationship: Our relationships with God, with one
another, and with ourselves.
Trust and relationships, once broken
partially or completely by sin (the difference between venial and mortal sin),
must be rebuilt and repaired. In our Church, we have the sacraments, especially
Reconciliation and Eucharist, which begin the process of rebuilding and
repairing the damage to relationships caused by our sin. “Through the ministry
of the Church,” God absolves; God grants us “pardon and peace,” but neither God
nor we forget the damage caused by sin to our relationships. “Forgive and
forget” does not repair the hurt relationship; does not serve accountability. The
person sinned against continues to hurt, while often the sinner feels guilty,
even when the guilt is not admitted or spoken; even when told to “forget about
it” and move on from the sin. Has anybody here either been sinned against or
been the sinner, hurt or been hurt by another person, and so you know all too well
of what I speak?
Accountability, not “forgive and
forget,” is at the heart of our Church’s teaching on purgatory. Sin, even sin
that has been forgiven and absolved, has still caused a break in relationship.
This broken relationship must be purified; rebuilt; repaired, even if the
forgiven sinner will eventually go to heaven. Purgatory’s destiny is heaven;
not “hell with parole” but a Catholic understanding of accountability.
And yet we are called to pair
accountability with infinitely generous forgiveness. God is not the God of
“forgive and forget”; neither is God the God of the record or ledger. Neither
are we, then, to keep a record of one another’s or our own wrongs. This
actually destroys us more than the sinner whose records we keep with an
obsessive vengeance!
“Not seven times but seventy-seven
times,” Jesus says to Peter. Not “forgive and forget” or record-keeping of
wrongs, but God and our Christian faith invite us to both accountability and
infinitely generous forgiveness.
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