Thursday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in us.” - C.S. Lewis
Today Peter asks how often he must forgive. The rabbis taught, based on a misinterpretation of the Prophet Amos, the requirement to forgive was three times. Peter multiplied that by two and added one for good measure asking, “As many as seven times?” Peter would have been praised for his great generosity. But Jesus corrects him, “No, seventy times seven times.” Whether that means 70 x 7 (490) really is beside the point as seven, in Hebrew numerology, means without limit. Seven is a number associated with divinity, with perfection.
To drive home his point, the teacher from the Galilee offers the fisherman of the Galilee the parable of two debtors. The first is brought to the King for owning “a huge amount.” The actual term used by Matthew is “10,000 talents.” A talent is equivalent to 6,000 denarii and a denarius was a full day's wage. In other words what was owed was 60,000,000 days worth of work, something that would take 164,271 years to repay. His request was totally absurd. He would need to live to be 165,000 years of age.
In today’s terms if he were making $100.00 a day (or 12.50 an hour), he would have owed 6 billion. But when the King saw the man prostrate on the ground begging for time, his “heart was moved with pity” and he forgave the entire debt. He didn’t even ask him to pay what he could. He whipped the slate clean.
Do we see what God does for us? The Almighty eliminates our entire debt, forgiving us 7 x 77, 490 times and more. And we are to do the same, forgiveness being the hallmark of the Christian. However no one should be thinking that forgiveness is easy, especially if the offense is serious. And some relationships need to end for a myriad of reasons. Yet still we are asked to do what Jesus encourages Peter to do. This requires a tremendous amount of prayer, time and patience.
—Timothy J. Cronin
With appreciation to Msgr. Robert J. Landry of the Diocese of Fall River MA who crunched all these numbers.