- First Reading: Ezek 12:1–12
- Responsorial Psalm: Ps 78:56–57, 58–59, 61–62
- Gospel: Matt 18:21–19:1
The translation we heard obscures a little of the distinction between the two debts. In the first case, it says that the servant who is forgiven owes a huge amount. In the second, it says that another servant owes him a much smaller amount. But the text itself tells us what those amounts are.
The smaller debt is one hundred denarii. Matt 18:28, NA28: Gk ἑκατὸν δηνάρια (hekaton dēnaria), “one hundred denarii.” A denarius was the wage for one day of labor, so this man owes about one hundred days’ worth of work. That is a real debt, but it is genuinely repayable.
The first servant, however, owes his master ten thousand talents. Matt 18:24, NA28: Gk μυρίων ταλάντων (myriōn talantōn), “ten thousand talents.” A talent was equivalent to fifteen years of labor, so his debt amounts to one hundred fifty thousand years’ worth of work. The contrast, then, is not simply between a small amount and a large one. It is the difference between what can genuinely be repaid and what is impossible to repay.
That helps explain why the master orders not only the servant but also his wife, his children, and all his property to be sold. Even that would not settle the debt. In effect, every generation after him would be sold off as well, and still this enormous debt could never be repaid.
The servant promises to pay it back, even though that is impossible. He can never repay the debt. And yet the master, although he is owed so much, is moved with compassion, lets the servant go, and forgives the debt. That is the kind of forgiveness the first servant receives. Yet he goes out and has another servant thrown into prison for owing him so little—for owing him an amount that genuinely could be repaid.
That is the heart of the parable: when we receive forgiveness, not only do we owe forgiveness, but from God himself we learn how to forgive.
Our debt to God comes not only from the sins we have committed, which is what we often think about. We owe him our very lives, the universe, and every good thing we have. We owe him so much that we cannot possibly repay it, and yet he willingly forgives us all of it. He gives us the opportunity to do as much good as we can, knowing that even our best efforts amount to nothing in comparison with what we owe.
And so his expectation is that we go out and forgive debts. We forgive all those things that, in the grand scheme, are ultimately small. We forgive them and move on, just as he has forgiven us.
The heart of the parable is to go to God to learn how to be merciful—to learn how to show mercy and how to forgive. Through our own experience of receiving forgiveness, and by becoming more aware of the debt we owe to God, we find the strength to show mercy and forgiveness to those around us whose debts to us are so much smaller.
It is good, then, to spend time meditating on how much we owe to God and to appreciate it more deeply every day, because that puts everything else into perspective. Whether it is a little comment that hurts our feelings or something more serious—when someone truly wrongs us—we can see it in the light of God’s mercy and say: I can let this go. I can forgive this and move on, because God has forgiven me so much more and has given me so much more than I have ever given this person.
By continually meditating on that, we gain the virtue of mercy. We learn to show mercy without having to stop and calculate, without a second thought, and without growing in bitterness.