Matthew 18:23-35
Today we continue to celebrate the Dormition of the
Theotokos, the “falling asleep” of our Lord’s virgin mother, who was the first
receive Christ into her life and the first to follow Him into the Kingdom of
heaven as a whole, embodied person. The
Savior was born into our world as the God-Man through her receptivity and
obedience. She was born into the
fullness of eternal life through her Son, the Victor over death. Her glorious example inspires us to embrace
our calling to become like God in holiness in every dimension of our
personhood.
The Theotokos is as fully human according to nature as
the rest of us, and she has become the epitome of holiness by uniting herself
without reservation to the Lord. She
became the living Temple of God, the Ark of the New Covenant, when she freely
accepted her unique vocation as His virgin mother who contained the eternal Son
of God in her womb. She points us to her
Son by her blessed example and her constant prayers that the water of our lives
may be transformed into the wine of the Messianic Banquet.
Even as we celebrate the Theotokos’ translation to the heavens,
we confront a difficult truth in today’s gospel reading about what it means to become
fully receptive to her Son. The first
servant begged for more time to pay an unbelievably large debt and his master
responded with shocking mercy, forgiving the debt completely. But instead
of sharing the mercy that he had received with a fellow servant who owed him
much less, the man refused to show any compassion. He had the second
servant put into prison until he could pay the full amount. When the
master heard what had happened, he had the first servant put in jail until he
could repay the massive amount he owed. Christ concludes the parable with
these chilling words: “So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of you,
if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
This parable presents an uncomfortable truth: How we
treat those who are in our debt or who have wronged us reveals the true state
of our souls. If we have embraced the Lord’s mercy, then His gracious
divine energies must permeate our lives. He said, “love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your
Father in heaven.” To become radiant with mercy to the point we do not
limit our love only to people who treat us well is necessary to obey Christ’s
commandment: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5: 44-48)
If we dare to call upon God’s forgiveness for our sins,
we will condemn ourselves as hypocrites if we refuse to forgive others.
He is infinitely holy and we are each the chief of sinners against the Father
Who sent His Son for the salvation of the world. (Jn. 3:17) As
those who ask for mercy beyond what we could possibly deserve, how could we ever
be justified in refusing to forgive someone else? The God-Man
enables us to become like Him in holiness, and He forgave even those who
rejected, betrayed, and killed Him. Since Christ has identified Himself
with even the lowliest people, how we treat those who have offended us is how we
treat our Lord. Everyone is a living icon of God. As St. John wrote, “If
anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love
his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”
(1 Jn 4:20) When we refuse to forgive others, we show not only a lack of
love for them, but also for the Savior.
Despite our best intentions, forgiveness of those who
have wronged us deeply rarely comes quickly or easily. Forgiveness is not
simply a matter of what we say or how we act, but roots in our hearts, even as
murder roots in anger and adultery roots in lust. Christ calls us to
share in His life so fully that we acquire the purity of heart that comes from
the healing of the corruption that darkens our spiritual vision.
A necessary step in embracing that healing is to mindfully turn
away from obsessing about the wrongs of others. We gain the strength to do so
by opening our hearts to the healing power of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul wrote,
“the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Gal.
5:22-23) As St. Silouan the Athonite taught, “One can only love one’s enemies
through the grace of the Holy Spirit.” And “He who does not love his enemies,
does not have God’s grace.”
How we respond to those who have wronged us reveals the
true state of our souls in a way that goes beyond the simplistic distortions of
the Christian faith that are so popular in our culture. Regardless of our
opinions about anything, how moral our outward behavior may be, or what warm
feelings we may have about Christ, if we are so enslaved to the passions of
pride and anger that we hate, condemn, and refuse to forgive anyone, then we reject
our Lord because we refuse to embrace His gracious healing to the point that we
conform our character to His. We so easily become blind to the image of
God in those we resent due to our own passions. Doing so is nothing less
than repeating Cain’s murder of Abel in our hearts. Apart from the healing power of the Holy
Spirit, there is simply no escape from slavery to an endless cycle of retribution
that leads only to the grave. We do not
have to look very closely at our world today to see the tragic results of
living that way.
The Savior endured the full consequences of such
depravity in His crucifixion and death to lead us from the grave to the glory
of the heavenly kingdom through His resurrection on the third day. He
abides in our hearts through the Holy Spirit through Whom we are able to cry
out to God “Abba, Father,” for we are not slaves, but beloved children of God,
heirs to all the promises to Abraham through faith in Christ. (Gal. 4:6) In
order to receive His healing strength, we must open ourselves as fully as
possible to the power of the Holy Spirit. He is “everywhere present
and fills all things” and we have received Him personally in the holy mystery
of Chrismation. In order to acquire the fruits of the Spirit, we must
actively cooperate with God’s grace by struggling to grow in humility, which
means learning to see ourselves as we truly are. That is what the first
servant in today’s parable obviously lacked. When we know in our hearts that
we are the chief of sinners and recognize that our very existence and all our
blessings are dependent upon the undeserved mercy of the Lord, then we will no
longer be driven to condemn anyone else.
The path to the healing of our souls does not run through
self-righteous legalism or attempts to use God to raise ourselves up over
anyone else for any reason. The Theotokos,
who humbly said “Yes!” to God with every ounce of her being, shows us a completely
different path. She condemned no one,
not even those who crucified her Son, for she was so united with Him in love that
there was no place in her soul for hatred. We will acquire the spiritual health to
forgive from our hearts those who have wronged us when, like her, we become so
receptive and obedient to the Lord that we recognize the folly of focusing on
anything other than the one thing needful of hearing and obeying the Word of
God. More than anyone else, the
Theotokos shows us how to gain the strength necessary to live as those who are “partakers
of the divine nature” by grace. Let us
follow her glorious example, for she embodies the path to the Kingdom of
Heaven.
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