Father Randy Koenigsknecht
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Jesus calls us to extend to others the same mercy that God has shown us. This Homily Short explores forgiveness, our relationship with the Lord, and the freedom that begins when we surrender judgment and vengeance to Him.
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Now, you might be tempted to say, well, isn’t hell just for the really bad people? Aren’t I all set? Well, Jesus gives us this long warning parable for a reason. There’s two servants. The one servant is indebted to the master, says a great amount.
The equivalent of about 5,000 lifetimes of daily wages. So the servant goes to the master and he says, be patient, I’ll pay you back. There’s no repayment plan for that.
In modern day money, it’s the equivalent of like a small country. But what does the master do? He doesn’t put him on the repayment plan. He forgives the debt, takes it away, welcomes him back home.
Now that servant, he has another fellow servant who owes him a small amount. And he, unlike the master, he doesn’t show him mercy. He throws him in chains, throws him in prison.
The master finds out about this and he comes to that servant and he says to him, I forgave you your guilt, your debt. Could you not forgive your fellow servant’s debt? And it says that he hands him over to the torturers. And the next line should be very striking to us.
He says, and so will my heavenly father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart. Maybe we’re tempted to think, well, he’s saying that to the crowd. He’s saying to the people who follow him lightly, but not really committed.
No, he doesn’t say that to those people. He says that warning to the head of the apostles, to the one who will be the first pope. So my father do to you, Peter, unless you forgive your brother from your heart.
And so you may be tempted and drawn to fear by this kind of reality we’re living in. Okay, well, if Peter and Paul are worried about making it, what chance do I got? But you’re still missing the point. That’s a natural reaction.
But it’s wrong because you’re still focused on it’s what I do that gets me there. No, it’s not what you do. It’s who you know.
And what you do should probably better correspond to who you know. But it starts with knowing Jesus, starts with knowing the Lord, following him. And so we don’t have to live out of fear.
The goal isn’t, well, okay, I got to do all this stuff. The goal is how close can I get to him? The one who really matters, the one who I want to live with in heaven. How close can I get to him here and now on this earth? When I give my life fully to the Lord, I experience that joy in life because I start to live the life of heaven.
Because heaven’s about a person. And the more I live with him here and now, the more I begin to experience that life right here. And heaven begins to break through.
And amazing things happen. Do I have that real relation with the Lord? Do my actions concretely reflect the person that I say I believe in? And most importantly today, is there someone that I need to forgive? Am I willing to begin to imitate my heavenly father as he deals with my brothers and sisters? Am I willing to deal with them the same way? I remember forgiveness, it doesn’t mean we forgive and forget. No, absolutely not.
It doesn’t mean that there’s reconciliation, that you go back into the same relationship. But am I willing to let go of that judgment of the vengeance that I desire, the debt that I know that they’re owing against me? Am I willing to take that step, be like my father, and forgive my brother and sister, forgive the debt against them? If I do that, I can start asking, Lord, make me want it for real, so that we can come to him openly, honestly, we can be received by him with love, just begin to live from that place of freedom. I belong to you, Lord.
I am yours. We can have deep joy, deep life, and it will be a life that will draw other people to us and to the Lord who gives us life.