José Ricardo Bezerra and Felipe Bezerra
Chapter 18 of Matthew closes with a parable that unsettles us. Last Sunday we heard about the duty of fraternal correction and the power of prayer made in common (cf. Mt 18:15-20). Now comes the concrete example, and it grows out of a question from Peter: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Mt 18:21).
Anyone who listens to the whole parable usually reacts with indignation. The servant had just been forgiven an impossible debt and could not forgive a small one. It is the same indignation David felt at the parable told by the prophet Nathan, when the king grew furious at the rich man who stole the poor man’s ewe lamb and then heard the sentence that undid him: “You are the man!” (2 Sm 12:7). The parable of Jesus does the same to us. It lets us judge the wicked servant until we realize that we are talking about ourselves.
As always, we have chosen five points for your meditation and prayer, which we share on the podcast: https://youtu.be/V8ibSPL9oo0 (with subtitles in your language).
1. “As many as seven times?”
Peter’s question is generous. Among the teachers of Israel there was a tradition of forgiving up to three times, associated with the numerical language of the prophets (“For three crimes of Israel, and now four, I will not take back my word,” cf. Am 1:3; 2:6), although the biblical text does not lay down that rule. Peter doubles the number and then adds one more. Seven, the number associated with fullness, the same number as the falls of the just man: “Though the just fall seven times, they rise again” (Prv 24:16).
Peter is reading his Master’s heart well. He has already understood that Jesus goes beyond the common measure, and he runs ahead. What he still cannot imagine is how far that “beyond” reaches. Jesus answers: “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:22), an expression that some translations render as “seventy times seven.” Either way the meaning is the same: this is not a new sum to be worked out, it is the end of bookkeeping. Where Lamech sang of vengeance seventy-seven times (cf. Gn 4:24), Jesus puts forgiveness without measure. He is not widening the limit, He is removing the limit from the place where we put it.
And there is a question hidden in the answer, the one the parable will let Peter discover on his own: how many times do you think God should forgive you?
2. “A debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount” (Mt 18:24)
The first detail of the sentence already says a great deal: he was brought. The servant did not present himself, he was brought. One day we too will be brought to give an account, whether we want to or not, at the particular judgment and at the last judgment (cf. CCC 1021-1022; 1038-1041).
The liturgical translation speaks only of “a huge amount.” The Greek text gives a number: ten thousand talents. The talent was a measure of weight, about 34.2 kilos, and it was worth six thousand denarii. Since the denarius was a worker’s daily wage (cf. Mt 20:2), a single talent stood for close to six thousand days of work, something between sixteen and twenty years. The Gospel does not say what metal those talents were made of, but some Bibles carry in a footnote the calculation made by weight in gold, and by that reckoning, at this week’s price, the ten thousand talents would come to something around 41.7 billion euros, about 247 billion reais. The conversion is only an estimate, and it serves merely to give the scale of what the parable calls a huge amount.
No worker ever reaches that figure. It is not a matter of effort, it is a matter of scale: an hour of a person’s work has a price and the number of hours in a lifetime has a limit. The debt is simply unpayable.
The question remains: how does anyone pile up a debt like that? Probably because he was responsible for a great many things and a great many people, and he squandered what had been entrusted to him. The worth of a life does not fit into a figure, and the Lord had already asked what anyone could give in exchange for his own life (cf. Mt 16:26). We too hold a fortune in our hands that we do not always notice: the people the Lord entrusts to us, our time, the faith we have received. It is worth asking, in prayer, what we have been doing with it.
And there is one more detail that slips by unnoticed: if the master forgives a sum like that without doing the math, who is this master?
3. The master was moved with compassion and forgave the whole debt (Mt 18:27)
The servant did not ask for forgiveness. He asked for time: “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full” (cf. Mt 18:26). It is almost impudence, because he could never have paid. Even so, he threw himself at his master’s feet and begged.
He received far more than he asked for. The king had already ordered that he, his wife, his children and his property be sold to pay the debt (Mt 18:25). He walked away from there with his family’s freedom and with the debt canceled. Saint John Chrysostom comments that the master already wanted to forgive and waited for the servant to come and ask, because forgiveness is not imposed, it is welcomed.
If the master had forgiven ninety percent, the servant would still owe a fortune and would still be bound to him for the rest of his life. God’s forgiveness is not a discount. It is whole, and it is free (cf. CCC 1441; 1846-1848).
4. “He found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount” (Mt 18:28)
The liturgical translation says only “a much smaller amount.” The Greek text gives a figure: one hundred denarii. Compared with a day’s wage in Brazil today, that comes to something around fifteen thousand reais. It is no trifle, it is not the widow’s mite (cf. Mk 12:41-44). It is a real debt, and its loss was felt.
And here is the point: what that servant was demanding was just. The other man really did owe him, and he had the right to collect. What he did not have was the right to collect that way, because he himself had not been treated according to justice, but according to mercy. Whoever has been treated with mercy and goes back to measuring everything by justice has forgotten where he came from.
The Gospel even takes care to say that this happened “when that servant had left” (Mt 18:28). There was no time to forget. There is no claiming that the memory of the forgiveness he had received had grown distant, or that time had passed and things had changed.
5. Handed over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt (Mt 18:34)
The ending is frightening. The master hands the servant over to the torturers. The liturgical translation uses that word, and others have tormentors or jailers, because the Greek term names the one who inflicts torment.
The language is that of a parable, and it gives no one permission to treat his brother that way. But Jesus uses it as a serious warning: whoever refuses to forgive closes himself off to the forgiveness that He Himself gives us. A number of Christian interpreters have also applied this image to what a grudge does inside us, the thoughts that keep coming back, the resentment we hold on to against our brother and sometimes against God Himself. It is a torture without end, and it begins here.
It is worth recalling the image Dante Alighieri places in the last canto of the Inferno: Satan enthroned in the ice, isolated, closed in on himself, in a place where human warmth never arrives. It is the portrait of someone who closes himself off to forgiveness.
There remains the question the parable leaves us: had the master not already forgiven? He had, and the Gospel says so twice. But the parable presents that servant’s refusal as a radical contradiction of the forgiveness he himself had received. In an expression of Pope Francis, he was “mercied” and did not show mercy. He experienced it and did not learn from it.
That is the greater lesson. Jesus said: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29). And He also said, after washing the disciples’ feet: “If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it” (Jn 13:17). Receiving is not enough, it has to be lived.
That is why the Gospel ends the way it does: “So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart” (Mt 18:35). The expression is not decoration. Jesus really does use the word kardía, heart. And it is the same measure we pray every day in the Our Father: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Mt 6:12; cf. CCC 2842-2845). Whoever deliberately refuses to forgive contradicts the prayer he prays every day and closes himself off to the forgiveness he asks for. To forgive does not mean giving up justice, the reparation that is owed or the prudence that is needed, but rather no longer keeping the debt in one’s heart.
Forgiving is not easy. There are wounds where forgiveness is a long process, taken up again many times, and asking for that grace is already the beginning of forgiving. But it is not impossible, because it does not begin in us. It begins in the forgiveness we have already received. The more aware a person is of how much has been forgiven him, the more capable of forgiving he becomes. It is hard to be merciful to others without having first experienced in oneself what mercy is. Faced with this, the only thing left is the question of the psalm: “How can I repay the Lord for all the great good done for me?” (Ps 116:12).
Steps of the Lectio Divina
The Lectio Divina is the prayerful reading of the Word of God. Set aside a time of silence, call upon the Holy Spirit and go calmly through these steps, praying yourself with this Gospel.
1. Reading (Lectio). What does the text say? Read Mt 18:21-35 calmly in your own Bible, from beginning to end. Notice who acts in each scene: who brings, who begs, who forgives, who collects.
2. Meditation (Meditatio). What does the text say to me? Which debt have I already been forgiven and perhaps forgotten? Is there someone today from whom I have been demanding, by justice, what I myself received only by mercy?
3. Prayer (Oratio). What do I say to God on the basis of the text? Give thanks for the forgiveness you receive each day and ask for the grace to recognize it. Ask also for a heart able to truly forgive the person who comes to your mind right now, and pray for that person by name.
4. Contemplation (Contemplatio). What new way of seeing does God give me? Stay in silence before the master of the parable, who cancels the whole debt before the other man even had the courage to ask. Let that image tell you who God is.
5. Action (Actio). What is the Lord calling me to today? Choose one concrete gesture this week: a conversation you have been putting off, a message, a debt you are going to let go.
See you next week!
Shalom!
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Podcast video: https://youtu.be/V8ibSPL9oo0 with subtitles you can select in your own language.
