24 Sunday A Parable of the unforgiving servant

Four minute homilies

Parable of the unforgiving servant

The parable of the unforgiving servant is at the heart of the Gospel. It is an example for us to learn how to forgive and forget. We know by experience that it is not easy. Until we forgive the other person from the heart, we won’t be able to forget. If the grudge keeps coming back to our mind, it is a sign that we haven’t managed to forgive. It is only a desire, an intention, something we would like to do, but we don’t have the heart to do it. Jesus gave us this parable to learn how to find true forgiveness.

This parable puts things into perspective in a very graphic way. The difference between what the servant has been forgiven and what he should forgive to his friend is colossal; it must have blown the minds of the listeners. For us it is difficult to grasp the ammount of money, because the Gospel uses the local currency of the time and we are not familiar with it. It is the difference between millions of dollars and few hundred dollars. It doesn’t make sense that the servant didn’t forgive the debt of his friend, specially just after a big debt was canceled. It is so ridiculous that it highlights the selfish attitude of the unforgiving servant, and at the same time our own pettiness.

This parable helps us to understand a bit better the difference that exist between us and God. God forgives us everything, but we keep track of little petty things. When we go to God with our complaints, pointing out the offences we have suffered from our brothers and sisters, the first thing he asks is: “Do you want me to show my list? Do you really want to see it? It is so long that it is rolled up as a toilet paper. And I have a whole warehouse full of them.” Once we see how ridiculous our small list of grievances is, compared with the infinite list of our offences to God, we can forget about our little grudges and learn how to forgive.

Once I saw a cartoon where God was displayed as an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud, looking a bit sleepy. There was a small angel flying around asking God: “What do you do all the time? Aren’t you bored?” And God responded: “What do I do? I forgive.” This is what God does with us all the time. We are little children, being naughty, trying to push the boundaries, trying to get away with things. And God, who is a good loving Father, is always ready to forgive and forget. He says that once he forgives, he buries our sins in the deepest black hole in the universe, and they disappear from his eyes, sucked in by the dark matter. God’s delete button is for ever; you cannot retrieve the files from his hard disk. God doesn’t keep grudges and he doesn’t remember once he has forgiven us. He has a very short term memory. We need to learn from him if we are to be good sons and daughters of his. He loves when we make up with his children.

If the unforgiving servant had forgiven the little debt of his friend, he would had become the forgiving servant, even though the parable would had disappeared. But It would had started a chain of forgiveness that would have reached down to our own time. We can start this chain ourselves, beginning to pray about the grudges we keep in our hearts and trying to heal them, comparing them with all the offences we have caused to our Father God, and learning from Him how to delete them from our minds.

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