An attitude of forgiveness

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Sir 27, 30 - 28, 7; Rom 14, 7-9; Mt 18, 21-35

Recently somebody told me about a Japanese tradition which goes back some 500 years of so. This tradition is actually an art: broken pottery is fixed using a special lacquer dusted in silver, gold or platinum. In doing so, they give more importance to the cracks themselves and their repair is considered an art which actually makes the broken pottery more valuable.

Precious cracks in our fragile relationships

Today's gospel sheds light on our habits of relating with each other after cracks have developed in our relationships with each other. Who of us has never experienced the need of being forgiven and of asking forgiveness? I know that sometimes, it can be very hard to forgive and it is very easy for me from up here to say that we must forgive. Although it is a delicate issue, it does not mean that we do not pause and reflect about the gift of forgiveness.

Accepting God's mercy and forgiveness

But first, we must keep in mind that our point of departure however has to be our awareness that we are forgiven by God. When we talk about being forgiven by God, we are not simply saying that God forgives us every time we make particular sin or other. Through the death of His Son Jesus, we were redeemed and are redeemed every moment of our life. This is the huge amount of money that the first master owed his king in the parable. It is approximately 15 years of wages for a labourer of the day. This is the gratuity with which God loves us. We owe him so much, because he gave us existence. It is through his love that we exist, and yet he demands nothing from us. And the vase repaired with golden glue is there right in front of us: Jesus Christ crucified, a stark reminder of God's love for us despite our sinfulness. Therefore the first step is a sense of gratitude towards God for his infinite mercy and forgiveness.

Forgiving oneself

With that comes also a readiness to forgive oneself. Our sins can sometimes appear so big in our eyes that we refuse to forgive even ourselves. This is a great pity, because God forgives us readily but we keep our hearts closed. Think about that. God forgives us yet we refuse to forgive ourselves!

The attitude of forgiving others

However we cannot stop there. Just as when we breathe, we cannot just inhale, we also need to exhale, otherwise we die, in the same way, we cannot truly enjoy God's love and forgiveness unless we behave in the same way towards others. To forgive seventy times seven means to have a an attitude of forgiveness. Always. To have a forgiving attitude means to allow the other person to be himself or herself, to allow the other person a space where he or she does not feel afraid of making mistakes, or ashamed of past faults. To forgive seventy times seven is to receive the other as a gift, in other words, to accept him or her as he or she is not as I would like them to be.

True forgiveness

Forgiveness is a process. In a way it is a bit like rewriting history. We cannot forgive and forget, otherwise we will very easily forget that we have forgiven. Rather, when we forgive, we remember in a different way. When we truly forgive someone else, we are not saying, "Oh its ok, no problem!" When we say that we probably have not really forgiven and neither do we help the other person grow. When we truly forgive others, we recognise the wrong that the other person has done and we are saying that we believe that he or she can do better than that. To be able to do so we too must learn the Japanese art of repairing our relationships with a glue made of gold, which makes our relationships even more precious than they were before.

Communal forgiveness

Pope Francis says that the family is "the best training ground for mutual giving and forgiving, without which no love can last long." If any relationship is to last, there must be giving and forgiving! Forgiveness must therefore be not only personal but also communal: we must be able to forgive as a family, as a nation. Each country, each nation, each ethnic group, each religion has its own painful histories which it must face. Sweeping them under the rug will do no good. Rather, as time passes, we are becoming more conscious of how urgent reciprocal forgiveness is: to ask for forgiveness and to accept forgiveness not only personally but also collectively. But that cannot happen without the change of heart of each person, one heart at a time.

The last time I checked I did not find any app that can bring about easy forgiveness. It is an art that must be learnt, but most of all a grace that we must beg for. Forgive us, Lord, as we forgive those who trespass against us!