FORGIVENESS: SELF-IDENTITY OF A CHRISTIAN

Not to forgive is not to be Christian

September 17, 2023: 24th Sunday in Ordinary time

Sirach 27:33 - 28:9; Romans 14: 7-9; Matthew 18: 21-35

Think of some prominent leaders today who appear to be extremely good, pious and praticing with regard to their religious belief, but are underneath promoting violence, killing and distortion of peace! It is not at all difficult to picture at least a few of them in the world scenario today, isn't it? Can this be a true Christian value... if the leader is a pronounced Christian, what he or she does is certainly a counter witness to faith and to the values presented by Jesus! The Word today presents forgiveness as the self-identity of a person of God, the trait of a true Christian. It is not to forgive seven times, or several times, but forgiving without count that makes me a Christian to the full. 

Let us first look at how forgiveness is at the very origin of my being a Child of God - as a humanity, we have been saved by that sacrifice - the sacrifice of reconciliation, the blood shed for the forgiveness of sins, the lamb who takes our sins away! The objective salvation of the entire human kind involves forgiveness at its core. On my part, personally, I am chosen in my baptism - again, an experience of forgiveness of the original sin, the tendency that I possess to choose sin over God. Every time I go away from the Lord, there is an ongoing experience of forgiveness that brings me back to the fold and makes me once again a child of God, a son or a daughter of God, inspite of my unworthiness. At the foundation of our faith experience, at the core of our daily experience, there is the experience of being forgiven. However, there is no denying that one of the most difficult Christian tasks that we have is, to forgive! 

Forgiving becomes a tough call, a strenuous task, a burdensome challenge, for mainly these three reasons:

1. Ready Forgetfulness - readily forgetting how much we have been forgiven. Just as in the parable narrated by Jesus in the Gospel today, if only we remain mindful of how much we have been forgiven, we would certainly make all the efforts possible to be ever more forgiving.  Human pride makes us forget as soon as possible the fact that we have been forgiven...instead what has to be forgotten, we rarely manage to forget. The famous Thirukkural: நன்றி மறப்பது நன்றன்று நன்றல்ல தன்றே மறப்பது நன்று (no one should forget the goodness of the other, but it is better we forget the ills of life as soon as possible) - is one of the wisest of sayings for a serene life. But when it comes to Christian life, it is not just a pious recommendation but a command for life. Humility helps us remember the forgiveness we have received from the other, and that helps in becoming ourselves more forgiving. 

2. Refusal to Forget - as hinted already, forgetting something that went wrong is an art of happy living. But we refuse to forget the wrongs that others have done - it is not merely the incapacity to forget, but the unwillingness to forget that causes the utmost damage to our selves. We remind ourselves of the hurtful experiences, we wait for a moment to pay back, we wish to see the one who hurt us suffer, we imagine horrible things happen to those who cause sufferings to us, we advocate the destruction of the other as part of retributive justice - these are ways in which we are determined not to forget something that is much better forgotten at the earliest. In the name of validating our feelings, not suppressing our experiences, and making sense of what has happened, we at times get stuck to our negativities and become slaves to our own judgements. We keep alive the wrong memories due to resentment and anger. How can we forgive or how can we truly experience forgiveness with these sentiments at heart. 

3. Reducing our Self-worth - we equate ourselves to what we suffer, our struggles and our pains, our toils and our strains and that makes it extremely difficult to open ourselves to others in forgiveness - we are hurt, irritated and vindicative! Instead, if we are more and more recognizant of our true worth - that whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord, we would see the worthlessness of making too much of a momentary passing experience, but go deeper into the lasting lessons that are left behind. We reduce ourselves to our achievements, our ego, our positions, and our status symbols...anything that affects these, we find it difficult to accept or impossible to overlook. They seem to occupy our mind so much that we want to prove ourselves right or show ourselves as affected! They did not accept him, they did not understand him, they did not follow what he was trying to tell them...but that did not matter to the Lord: he died for them, he died for us! Because Jesus identified himself with his Father, as the Son, as the Lamb, as the Saviour. 

Let us remember forever, Forgiveness is the self-identity that Jesus has given us, the characteristic mark that Christ has given us to be his followers - to be Christ-ians!