Ordinary Time 24
September 13, 2026
Forgiven
One of
the best ways to forgive is to do something kind for the one who offended you.
Bl. Mariano Mullerat was a doctor and the mayor of his small town in Spain
during the Spanish Civil War in the early part of the 20th Century.
Despite the growing anti-Catholic sentiment of the rebels, Mariano was a very
public Catholic – organizing religious processions for his town, giving free
medical care for the poor, and publicly correcting those who denied the truths
of Catholicism in his city. He knew that this would get him in trouble among
the rebels who supported President Franco’s anti-Catholic ideology, and one day
armed militiamen showed up at his house and ordered him into a truck with four
other fervent Catholics.
On the
short ride, Mariano encouraged the other men to forgive their captors, which
they were able to do. When they finally disembarked, Mariano noticed that one
of the guards had a gangrenous wound on his leg. The former doctor asked for
permission to treat it, which he did right there in the field, only moments
before his execution for his Catholic Faith! Imagine that – giving medical care
to the very person who is going to shoot you! And yet, that is what forgiveness
entails – not a feeling, not necessarily a friendship restored, but doing good
for one’s enemies.
After
all, we were enemies of God, and He forgave us. Does that sound extreme? Listen
to the words of St. Paul in Romans: “While we were God's enemies, we were
reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” God is so perfect that He
deserves all of our love, all of our obedience, all of our
lives. So when we sin, even if it is a small sin, it is a huge injustice to the
King Who deserves everything.
Once
there was a large ship that crashed and sunk off of the Irish coast. The
weather was fine and the captain was known to be a careful and safe man, so
everyone wondered why the ship had crashed. They sent divers to examine the
wreckage to see what went wrong, and among other things, a diver came up with
the compass on the ship. They took the compass to the lab to see if perhaps it
was defective and that caused the captain to take it off-course. They found
that prior to the crash, a sailor had tried to clean the compass with a pocketknife,
and a miniscule bit of steel from the pocketknife broke off in the compass
itself – and just that little bit of metal was enough to throw the compass off
enough to destroy an entire ship and lose dozens of lives.
Likewise,
one small sin is enough to merit eternal separation from God. St. Paul also
teaches us in Romans that “the wages of sin are death”. Cancer begins with one
cell – wars begin with one shot – and an eternity of doom begins
with one sin.
But here
precisely is the love of God – that while we all were trapped in sin, God loved
us too much to leave us there. St. Paul writes, “God proves His love for us in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We owed a debt we could
not pay! So God provided someone who could pay the debt in our place.
Many of
the princes in the Renaissance had a member of their court called a “whipping
boy”. When the prince would misbehave, the whipping boy would be whipped in his
stead. Hopefully by seeing the suffering of the other boy, the prince would
amend his ways. But we have seen quite the opposite – it was not the slave who
was beaten for the prince’s sin, but the King who was killed for the servant’s
sin! How could we remain ungrateful when we consider the Cross and the
forgiveness that was purchased upon it?
But
there are some sitting here who still believe that they are not really sinners.
I hear it all the time, people telling me, “Oh Father, I’m a good person.” Even
if we have not fallen into serious sin, this too is part of the mercy of God! A
saint who saw a condemned criminal on the way to his execution, and everyone
was jeering and mocking this public sinner. But the saint spoke up and said,
“If this man had received the same graces that I received, he would be more
faithful than I! And if I had not received the graces I did, I would be in his
place!” St. Augustine writes, “There is no sin that I could not commit due to
my frailty; and if I have not committed all sin, it is because God in His mercy
has kept me in the good.”
Without
the superabundance of God’s grace, all of us would be estranged from Him – all
of us would owe Him that huge amount that the man in the Gospels owed. The
literal translation of the Greek refers to more than a lifetime’s worth of
money – about six billion dollars in today’s currency. Upon forgiving that
debt, what should our response be? Two things.
The
clear one from the Gospel is the obligation to forgive others. Forgiveness is
not a feeling, but a choice. It does not mean that we want to be friends with
the person, but that I release them from my anger and from the desire for
revenge. Forgiveness is not a one-time thing, but one that we must do any time
the anger rises in our hearts. Like any virtue, forgiveness does become
easier the more we do it.
Forgiveness
doesn’t mean that what the other person did wasn’t important or hurtful. It may
have been completely wrong and even evil, but forgiveness removes the bitter
poison of resentment from our own hearts. Just as Christ forgave us from the
Cross even when we weren’t sorry, so we extend that mercy to others in
imitation of Him.
But
there is another response, too. If a King were to literally forgive us a six
billion dollar debt, wouldn’t we offer our life to him in gratitude? Such mercy
demands that we must live for Him. He hasn’t rescued us so that we
continue sinning, going back to our old ways. St. Paul tells us, “We have been
purchased, at a price.” The price wasn’t six billion dollars but something more
precious – the very Blood of God Himself. The Author of Life died on our
behalf. Such a free gift of grace and mercy demands nothing less than a life
lived completely for Him.
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