Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent
Today’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew’s Gospel is about forgiveness, but specifically about Jesus’ command to forgive others as we have been forgiven. We see this already in the prayer we pray every day, the Our Father: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. There is much hope in this prayer. We can trust in God’s mercy and forgiveness. But there’s also grave responsibility in this prayer: the forgiveness we pray for is contingent upon how we forgive others.
This relates to today’s Gospel reading because Peter asks Jesus how often we should forgive others. Jesus explains that we should continually forgive, again and again when forgiveness is begged of us: not seven times, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:22). And this of course is the conclusion of the analogy Jesus provides for His disciples: “in his anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart” (Matthew 18:34-35). These are harsh words, but they’re also words of hope. God will indeed forgive us, but we have a responsibility to bring this forgiveness to others.
In the responsorial Psalm we find, in the antiphon, the call to God to remember His mercies so that we might be forgiven, so that we might be saved. This echoes our first reading from the Book of Daniel. The prayer from the Book of Daniel, from Azariah, is not found in most Protestant Bibles, since it represents the larger Greek version of Daniel in Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments, which form part of the deuterocanon. It is a moving prayer, and in it Azariah asks God to remember the covenant He made with Abraham—which is the same petition Moses had made to evoke the mercy of God. And of course we know from the larger passage in Daniel that the three men are saved from the deadly fires; God answers their prayers.
Ours is a God of mercy, who will “not deliver us up forever” (Daniel 3:34). He has forgiven us, and He will forgive us, if we repent and turn back toward Him. But we too must forgive, as we have been forgiven. We must forgive in order to be forgiven. This is one of the many great benefits of frequenting the Sacrament of Confession. Of course by going to confession our sins are forgiven. Of course through that wonderful Sacrament we receive special grace to live the Christian life. But in addition to all these very important things, we also learn to forgive others as we have been forgiven. Confession teaches us to have mercy on others, because it helps us recognize how badly we are in need of God’s mercy. If we recognize our own sinfulness, and the amazing grace God gives us, how can we not share that forgiveness with others when they trespass against us? Do we not trespass against God daily?
This Lenten season, let’s make a firm resolution to become more like God, to forgive others more readily when they ask us for pardon. In that way we will become more like Christ, and we will spread His love to those around us.
- Jeff Morrow