Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18:35

There is a story of a man named George Wilson who in 1830 killed a government employee who caught him in the act of robbing the mails. He was tried and condemned to death by hanging. But the President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, granted him executive pardon. George Wilson, however, refused to accept the pardon. The Department of Corrections did not know what to do. The case was taken to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice Marshall ruled that “a pardon is a slip of paper, the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.” And hanged he was. Even if we are opposed to the death penalty, we still cannot but agree with the principle that pardon granted has to be accepted to become effective. This is the point of today’s Gospel message. When God forgives us, we must accept God’s forgiveness. The Gospel shows us that the way to accept God’s forgiveness is not just to say “Amen, so be it!” but to go out and forgive someone else.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:21-35) raises the frightening prospect that pardon already granted by God can be revoked. The King who forgave his servant his debt meant it. But when the servant went out and failed to forgive his fellow servant, the King revoked the pardon. By his action the servant had shown that he was unworthy of the pardon he had been given. This is why Jesus says: “So will my heavenly Father also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (Matthew 8:35). In other words, when God gives us His word of forgiveness, it is not over yet. It is only over when we are able to go out and forgive those who have sinned against us. The grace of God’s forgiveness needs our response of forgiving our neighbor to be finally ratified: “Forgive your neighbors the wrong they have done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray” (Sirach 28:2) or “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” (Luke 11:4).

Why do we find it hard to forgive others even though that is the only way to receive God forgiveness? The reason, it appears, is because we fail to appreciate our own forgiveness. Like the ungrateful servant in the parable, we focus on what our neighbor owes us rather than or what we owe to God, which God had graciously cancelled.

If we find ourselves among those who find it so hard to forgive other people, chances are that we have not come to appreciate sufficiently the immeasurable forgiveness that we ourselves have received from God. So, let us pray for a deeper appreciation of forgiveness that will make it easier for us to let others off the hook for their relatively minor offenses against us.

Fr. Hugh Duffy