Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

The Lord tells us that the one who has been forgiven much will show great love. But think back to this past Sunday. In Matthew’s Gospel, we heard the parable of the master who forgave his servant an immense debt. That servant then went out and refused to show the same kind of forgiveness to someone else.

That creates an interesting contrast with what the Lord says today. In the parable, the one who was forgiven an immense, if not impossible, debt did not respond with love at all. So why does this sinful woman respond differently? Why does she love greatly when the servant in the parable did not?

It has to be more than simply having a great debt forgiven. The answer, I think, is that she understands what she has received. She recognizes that she has been forgiven a great debt, and that this forgiveness makes all the difference in her life.

The man in the parable ultimately just did not care. Had the master kept the debt, I don’t know that he would have changed his life at all. He was indifferent to the fact that he was in debt.

But this woman wants freedom. She wants to meet the one who can forgive her debt, forgive her sins, and allow her to live in freedom. I think it is that experience of freedom that she truly appreciates. She knows she could never have reached it on her own. Christ himself is the only one who could offer her that gift, and that is what moves her to love.

That matters for our spiritual lives. If we do not see ourselves as indebted to God, we will not learn from him how to love, how to show mercy, or how to forgive. If we do not recognize the depth of our own sin, we will not appreciate the freedom he offers.

If we are comfortable with our sins, if we like them, if they make no difference to us, then we will not appreciate being forgiven. That forgiveness will not lead us to change our lives or teach us to love more. But the more thoroughly we understand how awful sin truly is, and how much we are in debt to God because of it, the more readily we recognize the freedom he gives us. The more deeply we appreciate his forgiveness, the more we learn how to love.

That is a fundamental Christian claim: we do not deserve God’s mercy. We do not deserve a relationship with him. Because we have sinned against him, we no longer have that relationship. Yet out of his great love, he calls us back to it.

He keeps giving us the help we need to become perfect, to be remade in his image as he originally intended us to be. He freely gives us that holiness so that we can be like him. And it is through that encounter, through that experience of God’s great love, that we learn how to love.

This sinful woman knew that in the very depths of her being. She understood who God was. That is what allowed her to show such gratitude and such love. The same is true for us. Only when we truly recognize and experience his love can we appreciate it and learn to love in this way.

So if we struggle to love, if we struggle to show mercy to others, the answer is not simply to try harder. It is to grow in our appreciation of God’s relationship with us: the debt we owe him, and yet the limitless forgiveness he keeps offering us.

By experiencing that forgiveness again and again, we learn how to love as this woman did. We learn how to truly love as Christ himself does.