Can you guess which one it was? Believe it or not, the test subjects’ most frequently registered emotion was anger. It seems that anger is the emotion that most often disrupts our equilibrium – we experience happiness, sadness, fear, etc., but much less often day to day than we experience anger, and all of its forms: frustration, exasperation, irritability, inconvenience. Most of us probably don’t consider ourselves to be angry people, but this study indicated that’s the emotion we experience more than any other.
In our first reading today, the writer of the Book of Sirach warns that we must be mindful of how anger can shape the way we act. Anger as an emotional reaction is not always sinful; often, it is an impulse that we can do little to control. But what we do next – how we react after feeling anger – is very much a moral decision. Feeling angry is not wrong, but responding in anger is, whether it’s in thought, word, or action. The writer of Sirach tells us that anger which seeks vengeance, that demands retribution from another, can be deadly. The original injury is made worse by our fixation upon it, a brooding that leads to even greater anger. In time, anger often leads to resentment, and resentments are never healthy, because by their nature they are a wound that we refuse to let heal.
If anger is so common, yet can be so spiritually damaging, what are we to do? Jesus has the answer in the Gospel today. Peter asks him the very logical question about how many times we must forgive; forgiveness is obviously good and necessary, but at what point does it become impossible or ridiculous to keep forgiving someone who keeps offending us? Jesus’s answer is surely one that shocked Peter: seventy-seven times. That’s how it is rendered here; in another Gospel, it is seventy times seven times. What’s meant is not an exact numerical formula, but rather the idea that we forgive as often as and as soon as another asks for forgiveness. In other words, whether we think of the wrathful vengeance of the Old Testament, or the quiet hardness of heart with which we are more familiar, a refusal to forgive is something completely contrary to the Christian identity.
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| Claude Vignon, The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (1629) |
Jesus explains the rationale for forgiveness with the parable we heard. Notice that the king’s first servant, the one who owes much, is asked for forgiveness only after being forgiven. Yet, despite having just received mercy himself, indeed the forgiveness of his entire debt, he refuses to show mercy in return. Why? Because he’s angry; he has become so dominated by his emotional response to not having received payment that he has forgotten the fact that his entire debt has been forgiven. That’s why, in the eyes of the king, his sin is not just refusal to forgive the debt but also the lack of gratitude for the forgiveness shown to him. If this man had truly understood and appreciated the mercy shown to him, he would have shown it by forgiveness as well.
Perhaps you can see where this is going: the same dynamic is true in our relationship with God. There’s no doubt that we suffer offenses and sins at the hands of others, sometimes even great ones. But while we are sometimes rightly angered by what others have done to us, we are not innocent ourselves – we too have offended others, and God above all. That’s why the Christian person first remembers how much he or she has been forgiven by the Lord. Remembering how God has forgiven us can be a kind of antidote to anger, a way of preventing ourselves from going down the road toward resentment. God offers us his mercy in any number of ways; for us as Catholics, most powerfully and most effectively in the sacrament of reconciliation. If this grace of forgiveness has been shown to us, we must prove that we truly understand and appreciate it by showing it to others.
I often hear from people that we struggle with holding a grudge toward someone who has hurt them. On the one hand, this is very understandable; we all feel anger at being hurt and are wary of being hurt again, and it can be especially hard to forgive someone who has hurt us greatly or who shows no remorse. But, on the other hand, we have to recognize that those inclinations toward resentment and hardness of heart are temptations, and we can choose to follow them or not. The Christian person must never, *never* let themselves give in to thinking, “I cannot forgive that person” or “I will not forgive you.” Why? Because we remember how much has been forgiven of us in Christ. Forgiveness is not something we do once we no longer feel angry or hurt; rather, it is a choice, a decision that is made precisely when we still do feel those things, so that the healing which has been given to us can be given in return. And if we are having trouble forgiving, perhaps that is a good spiritual clue that it has been too long since we have had the experience of being forgiven ourselves. Maybe we need to go to confession to receive mercy so that we can then show mercy in return.
Friends, in a few moments, we will say together the Lord’s Prayer, using the very words that Jesus taught us. And in that prayer, we will say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We should not pass lightly over those words. We are literally telling God that the way we treat others – either showing them mercy, or not – indicates to him whether we want mercy from him, or not. Let’s make sure our forgiveness and our receiving forgiveness are not hindered by our anger, and especially not by resentment, vengeance, and refusal to forgive. In the Eucharist we will celebrate shortly, we will receive the One who offers us forgiveness, who heals us of resentment, so that we can show others mercy as He has shown it to us.
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