|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
This Sunday, the 21st after Pentecost in the traditional Roman calendar, Holy Church gives us the Lord’s Parable about the Wicked or Ungrateful Servant from Matthew 18:21-35. Christ uses this parable to instruct His future Vicar, Peter, and therefor all future Vicars, the need for being forgiving.
In how many ways does the Lord underscore that critical part of the prayer He Himself taught us, about the need to forgive in order to be forgiven?
You know the story of the parable, I think. A King is doing his accounts with his servants. One servant owes the King an impossible to pay back sum, in Greek, 10000 talents. Broken down into denarii (the day-wage coin) that’s 60 million days of wages, some 168,384 years. In ancient Roman law, which would have been in force in Judea in the time of Jesus’ earthly life, debtors who could not pay back their debts could be put into a state of slavery to work off the value of the debt. In this case, the servant would be enslaved “forever”, which makes this a parable not just about forgiveness in general but about the Coming of the Lord at the end and the Last Judgment when all our accounts will be examined and settled for eternity. As we move through October and into November, the Parousia and end of the world is a more and more dominant theme.
This soon-to-be-doomed and enslaved servant begs mercy and obtains forgiveness of his debt. That teaches us that there is no sin so great that we can commit that God cannot and will not forgive it provided we ask for mercy. However, we have to be sincere in our plea for mercy. The immediate actions of the ingrate show his inner being. Upon meeting another servant in turn owing him money, the wicked one strangles his colleague and threatens him with imprisonment and slavery, to the ruin of the man’s family. When all the other servants report this to the king, the king is wrathful and gives the wicked ingrate the punishment that would have otherwise been remitted: eternity in Hell.
St. Thomas Aquinas remarks on this parable, making those distinctions of which he is so expert. The Angelic Doctor notes five points about the wicked servant. First, he immediately attacked his fellow servant for his debt, “as he went out” (v. 28). The shortness of time makes his behavior even more revolting given the instant proximity to obtaining his own forgiveness. Second, he was sanctimonious and two-faced. Moments before he was groveling and now he is menacing, Third, he was extremely unkind to an equal, another poor debtor like himself for whom he ought to have had sympathy. One might ask if we treat our coworkers properly. Fourth, he was spectacularly stingy, desiring from his colleague “a few hundred denarii”, compared to his own 60 million. Lastly, consider how cruel he was. He throttled, strangled his fellow servant over the tiny amount, immediately after leaving his own moment of forgiveness.
I have in mind the Lord’s injunction about forgiveness, the only thing He went back to explain in the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6, that’s how critically important it is.
14 For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
I have in mind the Lord’s point about anger towards other which also involves the image of debtor’s prison:
23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; 26 truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5:23-26)
Again, this parable has its moral dimension in that it guides us to treat others with mercy and understanding. Do we not all want that? We must be willing to give it. If we don’t… there’s always Hell. It’s pretty straightforward.
Therefore, we do well to make a brief review of the highlights of Hell. After all, the parable says,
35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Hell is pain. There are different kinds of pain available – obligatory – in Hell.
First, there is the pain of loss. If we cannot imagine what the joy of Heaven is, because “eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard” (1 Cor 2:9), that counts for Hell too. To know, without doubt, that Heaven’s happiness will never be ours would itself be a hideous and unhealing torment of the mind and heart. The pain of loss includes loss of Heaven and loss of the vision of God, the whole point of why we were created. Thus, St. Thomas Aquinas reasons that the torments of the damned are infinite, because they involved the loss of the infinite Good who is God.
Second, there is the pain of sense. Christ speaks on different occasions of fire (e.g., Matthew 13:42; 18:9; 25:41, Luke 16:24). Isaiah speaks of devouring fire (33:14). There is the sobering Rev 14:11:
11 And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
A good warning not to be cozy with any form of idolatry, if you get my point.
Fathers of the Church affirm that there is fire. St. Augustine said that “In comparison with it, every other fire is as a painting of a fire”.
So, let’s stipulate that there is fire.
Another torment of the senses will be from your fellow-damned. It is doubtful that they will be quiet and peaceful and friendly about their lot. Nor will you.
The damned will be tortured in their conscience, described as an eternally gnawing worm (Mark 9:47). The endless self-reproach and lying false-self-justification will never end, knowing that you could have been saved.
Furthermore, after the resurrection of the flesh, the torments of sense will include the physical senses. It it only reasonable since humans are soul and body, not just soul.
This will be forever. Not for a while.
This brings us to a practical point.
As I supplied above, “first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser” and also, from the parable:
29 So his fellow servant fell down and besought him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’
Often the sins that we commit require some kind of restitution. The natural law requires us in justice to give to others what is due to them. God has written this law into our being. We are bound to repair, as best we kind, the injuries which we have caused.
Pagans understood this. We have the help of Divine Revelation in the seventh Commandment of the Decalogue. In the Old Testament we have many instances of God instructing people how to make restitution. Moreover, under the New Covenant Paul wrote to the Romans:
7 Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. 8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
That “taxes” part is not quite the same as what is owed to persons, but the point is clear.
The salvation of our soul depends on forgiveness of sins: our own sins by God, the sins of others by ourselves. Restitution is a key issue in the forgiveness of our sins by God.
Also, sometimes one might hear that, “Well, I give alms and I give to charities.” That’s great. It’s not restitution. St. Anthony of Padua, Doctor of the Church said that without restitution – if possible – it doesn’t make any difference what acts of penance we might do, fasting or almsgiving. It’s all in vain.
Whether what we did was yesterday or years ago, we must try earnestly to make restitution. God has not forgotten. We will be called to account. If restitution is genuinely not possible, we must have the desire to make it at the least and do what we can, even if it is partial.
It is a good idea to make an examination of conscience about what we have gained by some less than honest way or if we have mistreated others or their property and have not made restitution.
Remember, if not for the higher love of God and of neighbor (contrition), at least the for fear of pains of loss and pains of sense (attrition).
