Matthew 18: 21-35 | 24th Ordinary Sunday | Year A

There is something difficult to understand in the servant of today’s Gospel. He stands before his master with a debt he cannot repay. He asks for patience, and the master, moved with compassion, forgives the debt and lets him go. He leaves having received something he could never have given himself.

Then he meets a fellow servant who owes him a much smaller amount. The other servant makes almost the same plea: “Be patient with me.” But he refuses and demands what is owed.

The contrast is striking. The same person who had just experienced the mercy of his master is now unable to extend that mercy to another. He has received forgiveness, but it does not seem to have changed the way he sees the person before him.
Perhaps this is where the parable becomes close to our own lives. We know what it is to need patience, understanding and forgiveness. We know that there are things in our lives we cannot put right by ourselves. We depend on the mercy of others, and ultimately on the mercy of God.

But there may be moments when we look at another person differently. We remember what was done to us. We remember the debt. We remember the hurt. The mercy we ourselves have received can somehow become less visible than what another person owes us.

The parable simply places these two experiences before us: a servant who is forgiven, and the same servant refusing to forgive. It leaves us to look at the distance between them.

He forgot the mercy he received and remembered the debt. When I stand before another person, what do I remember? Do I remember what that person has done to me? Or do I also remember what God has done for me?

And, has the mercy I have received become part of me?

And perhaps the question that takes us even deeper is this:

Do I really want others to experience the mercy I have experienced?