At the Master’s Table “How Many Times Do We Have to Forgive?”

Growing up in a big family of seventeen people in Uganda, we had one very important rule: when Mom went to the market, somebody had to keep an eye on everybody else! Whenever Mom left, she would call me and say, “Louis, I want you to write down the names of anyone who misbehaves while I am gone.” So, I became the family CIA agent!

I had my secret list. Someone talks back. Write it down. Someone refuses to work? Write it down. Someone fights? Write it down. Someone does not do the chores? Definitely write it down! And when Mom returned from the market, I would quietly hand her my report. I took my CIA job very seriously. Unfortunately, I was not very forgiving during my time in office. Then one day, Mom apparently decided that the CIA needed a new generation. She secretly gave the same assignment to one of my younger sisters. I did not know. One day, I was cooking. And, as sometimes happens when we are cooking, I burned the food! Now, in a big Ugandan family, burning the food was not a small mistake. There was no saying, “Sorry, let’s order pizza.” No! If I burned the food, I had to go into the garden, find something else to cook, bring it back, prepare it—and somehow get lunch ready on time. So, I went into damage-control mode. I covered my tracks. I found new food. I started cooking. I thought, “Nobody knows. I am going to survive this.” But somebody was watching. The CIA agent was watching! I begged my brothers and sisters, “Please! Do not tell Mom!” But nobody would tell me who the informant was. The identity of the CIA agent remained classified! Then Mom came. And eventually, the truth came out. Because I had been so good at keeping records of everybody else’s mistakes, my punishment was that I had to cook for another two weeks! And let me tell you: in our family, cooking was not a promotion! We rotated chores every week, and everybody wanted the easier jobs. Nobody wanted to cook. Nobody wanted to spend hours working in the garden. So, I thought to myself: “If only I had been a little more forgiving when I was the CIA agent, perhaps somebody would have been forgiving when I burned the food!” Sometimes we are very good at remembering other people’s mistakes and very bad at remembering our own.


And that brings us right into today’s Gospel. Peter asks Jesus: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive?” Peter thinks he is being generous when he suggests seven times. But Jesus answers: “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Jesus is not asking Peter to carry a notebook like my old CIA report! He is teaching us that forgiveness is not meant to be counted. Forgiveness sets us free Sirach says:


“Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.” That is a challenging teaching. We want God to forgive us generously. But when somebody hurts us, we can sometimes become very good accountants. We remember the date. We remember the words. We remember exactly what they said. We remember who was there. And sometimes, twenty years later, we can still say: “I remember exactly what you did!” But there is something important about forgiveness: Forgiveness frees the forgiver. When we refuse to forgive, we can remain tied emotionally to the person who hurt us. The event happened once, but our anger can make us experience it again and again and again. Forgiveness does not say, “What happened was okay.” Forgiveness does not mean that justice does not matter. Forgiveness does not mean that we immediately trust someone again. But forgiveness means: “I will not allow what happened to control the rest of my life.” When we forgive, we place the wound into God’s hands. And something beautiful happens. The forgiver finds peace. And when forgiveness is received, the forgiven person can also find peace. Forgiveness can free both people from the prison of resentment, guilt, anger, and the past. That is why forgiveness is not weakness. Forgiveness is freedom. Jesus tells us the story of the servant who owed his master an enormous debt. The master forgives the entire debt. But then that same servant finds another person who owes him a much smaller amount—and refuses to forgive him.


The problem is not that the servant received too little mercy. The problem is that he received mercy but refused to share it. And perhaps that is the heart of today’s Gospel. We are forgiven people. We come before God with our failures, our sins, our weaknesses, and our mistakes. And God continues to show us mercy. So, Jesus asks us to become people who know how to give what we have received. Maybe there is someone we need to forgive. A family member. A lover. A friend. A coworker. Someone who hurt us years ago. Maybe someone who has never even said, “I’m sorry.” And perhaps that is the hardest kind of forgiveness. But Jesus does not say, “Forgive only when the other person deserves it.” He says: “Forgive.” Sometimes we forgive seven times. Sometimes seventy-seven times. Sometimes we wake up one morning and discover that we still need to forgive the same person again.


And so my brothers and sisters, we pray: “Lord, I am still struggling with this. Help me to forgive.” And slowly, grace does its work. At the Master’s Table. And this is where the Eucharist becomes so beautiful. Every Sunday, we come to the Master’s Table. We do not come because we are perfect. We come because we need mercy. We come carrying our wounds, our disappointments, our mistakes, our resentments, and Jesus says: “Come.” At this table, Jesus does not simply tell us to forgive. He gives us the grace to forgive. He gives us His Body. He gives us His Blood. He gives us Himself. And perhaps today, when we receive Holy Communion, we can quietly bring before Jesus the name of someone we

are struggling to forgive. And we can say: “Jesus, You have forgiven me. Help me to forgive.” Because forgiveness does something powerful. It frees the forgiver. It gives peace to the forgiver and to the forgiven. And it allows us to stop living in yesterday and begin living in the freedom Christ gives us today.


So, Brother! Sister! Let us not keep secret CIA files of everybody’s mistakes! Let us remember our own need for mercy. We have been forgiven. We are being forgiven. And we are called to forgive. And from the Master’s Table, may we go home carrying not our grudges, but His mercy. And may Jesus give us the grace to say: “Lord, as You have forgiven me, help me to forgive.”


May it ever be so. Amen, Amen.