“Three strikes and you are out.” “This is your last warning.” “My patience is wearing thin.”

These are just some of the expressions we use to show a limit to forgiving others before an act of retribution.  Retribution hopes to teach the person a lesson not to re-offend or to settle matters once and for all.

This week’s Gospel continues from last week.  Chapter 18 of Matthew’s Gospel is about community living.  Community living offers opportunities and challenges.  We learn about others as well as ourselves.  A community, no matter how closely aligned their values and principles, will have the occasion to offend another, one way or another.

Last week, Jesus told us to approach the offender directly and lovingly with the intention of winning them back.  Peter, always ready to take the opportunity to clarify things with Jesus, asks to quantify forgiveness, as if to put a limit on it.  In response Jesus gives the figure seventy-seven times to say there is no limit.  Forgiving the other that many times ensures the offender is given every chance and the best chances of coming around.  In the parable, the first offender was forgiven for his enormous debt equivalent of taxes for an entire province or state.  This amount is impossible to repay.  He did not, however, forgive the much smaller debt, a few months wages of his debtor.

There’s no end or limit to God’s mercy but there is a condition that we must forgive others as well.

By Fr Hoang Dinh