Today we have some very serious talk about debts and what we owe to God. In today’s Gospel, we have two men. One owes one hundred days wages and the other owes one hundred million days wages. That amounts to a difference of 274,000 years of wages, a substantial difference. True, losing a hundred days of wages would be a substantial amount of money for most of us, but we probably would survive and after a few years of careful planning and hardship would be able to put it behind us. However, there would be no recovery from such a loss as losing one hundred million days wages. Jesus uses the biggest number they had at the time and the biggest currency they had to show what the cost of our sin is. Isn’t it amazing that God tells us the cost of our sins is worth one hundred million days of our work. I know I struggle with this concept of how are sins are so damaging, probably because I struggle to understand my value and what I was created for. I do not see my value as one worth dying for, especially not God dying for and in my place. I feel I often have little sorrow for my sins; I cannot understand how I have accrued such a debt. We need to first understand our worth and value in the light of God. He created the whole world for us and sent His son to die in our place. One of my friends had a very expensive instrument on her desk. It did not look very expensive but someone was playing with it and damaged it. They were very surprised when they found out how much it was worth. I am sure we have all encountered those situations when we forgot to ask the price of something and when the bill came we were shocked at the price. This is what will happen when we find out our worth and the horror of our sinfulness.
Can you imagine if you were given a bill for $20 billion and if you weren’t able to pay you would spend all eternity burning in Hell? I remember in the Lower Mainland when natural gas prices went up three hundred percent. One of the green house owners had a heart attack and died when he saw the new bill. Our sins caused the crucifixion of our Lord. In Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion, he wanted to be the one to nail Jesus to the cross and if you look closely in the movie it is his hand that did the nailing. He wanted this to remind himself that his sins crucified Jesus. This reminds us how much we need Jesus. We cannot be saved without Him and His paying our price. Not only do we need to pray to understand our value but also to have true sorrow for our sins. We should have great joy for the forgiveness we receive as Christians. I sometimes complain that I have to drive 240 km to go to confession but in truth I should be willing to pay any cost for so great a gift. You and I need mercy. If we want the justice of God, that is the one hundred million days wages. St Therese of Liseux was a big proponent of God’s mercy and in her convent there were nuns that were trying to expiate the justice of God. One of them died and visited Therese and said that it was a bad idea to try the justice route, better to stick with God’s mercy. What joy we should have today to have this available for us. So many times we come here all sad because we are not remembering that we have mercy and Heaven available to us. We have to remember that only God can get us ready for Heaven and Holy Communion. You know that part in the Mass – Lord, I am not worthy that you enter under my roof but only say the word and my soul shall be healed – what is the word? The word is firstly this: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That is what makes our soul ready for Heaven because it is remade into Jesus. Secondly, the word is: “I absolve you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Only through Jesus can we get there and we must accept this great grace.
Finally, after we have received these gifts, we must give them to others. In today’s Gospel, the sin against the other was reckoned as one hundred days wages. This is of course a fair amount of money. If most of us lost that sum it would take us some time to recover from that loss, nevertheless we could and that is the point. We can recover from the sins other commit against us with difficulty but this is why we must forgive. Forgiveness is not easy, it is a grace of God, and when someone does something really bad it is harder to recover and we must pray for the grace to do so. When we pray the “Our Father” we say, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Do we really pray that we call on forgiveness in as much as we forgive? We often don’t see our value or the value that another person has and that is why we don’t understand sin. We treat ourselves and others as objects. Think of all the demonizing we do to hold on to our lack of forgiveness. Can you think of a person that you have made a monster of in order to keep from forgiving? I am not saying not to make and keep good boundaries to someone that has hurt you and has the ability to keep doing that, but we cannot make into monsters the children of God when He happened to pay the admission price for them as well as you.
There are three things we need to do. We need to pray to understand our own worth in Jesus so we can understand the debt and respond with gratitude. We need to pray for a true horror of sin so we do not take the gift of mercy for granted. Finally, we need to pray for the grace to forgive others and seek forgiveness when we have offended because the measure we give will be the measure we receive.