Peter asks Jesus how many times must we forgive others. Jesus replies, not just 7 times, but 77 times. In Jewish culture, the perfect number was the number 7. In replying 77 times, Jesus is saying the number of times we, as his disciples must forgive, is an infinite number of times. In other words, we must always forgive others! This is not the way the world operates. Norm Peterson, a character from the T.V. sitcom, “Cheers”, summed it best up on one show. “It’s a dog eat dog world, and I am wearing Milk Bone underwear.” We live in a world in which the acceptable practice is to get even when someone wrongs us. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” is the rule by which our world operates.
Jesus tells us if we are to be his disciples, we cannot live by that rule anymore. Instead of getting even, as his disciples, we need to learn how to forgive. In another parish at which I worked years ago I knew a person I will call Marie, and she has given me permission to tell her story of forgiveness.
Marie had been married 12 years. She was a loving and caring mother of three children. One day she came to me very distraught. Her husband told her he wanted a divorce. Marie’s husband was known to abuse alcohol, and to be very emotionally abusive. He told Marie that he had been having an affair with another woman for over 5 years, and he wanted to dump Marie and his children, and marry the woman with whom he was having this affair.
Marie had worked very hard to make her marriage work. Like many married couples, Marie got married with the dream of building a life with her husband, having children, and growing old together. In cheating on her, he had betrayed the sacred trust of their marriage vows. Now all of Marie’s dreams of married life were now shattered like shards of broken glass on the floor. He moved out and filed for a divorce.
Torn apart by grief, Marie sought healing for her children and herself and they did extensive counseling individually and as a family. With the loss of her former husband’s income, Marie had to go out and find a job to support herself and her children. No longer able to afford it, Marie had to sell their family home, and she and her children moved into a much smaller, cramped townhome which she could afford on her salary. Little by little, over time, the family healed from this tremendous wound in their lives. After some time had passed, I asked Marie to help facilitate a separated/divorce support group in the parish. Having known the anguish of divorce, she was a source of hope to many who were overwhelmed by the nightmare that accompanies the initial stages of divorce. Though her children had their challenges as adolescents, they all survived them and grew into wonderful, faith-filled adults.
Ten years later, on a cold, wintery, sleety February night, Marie was preparing an evening meal for herself when she heard a knock at her door. She opened the door and found her ex-husband on her door step. He looked awful. His face looked thin and drawn. He was depressed, wet and cold. His second wife, tired of his abuse and his alcoholism, threw him out of the house. He had nowhere to go. He was suicidal. He came to Marie as a last desperate gesture for help. Marie invited him in. Took his wet coat and hat and hung them up. She invited him to sit down at her table and shared a warm meal with him. He poured out his heart and his sorrow to her. She listened, and worried that his mental state might endanger his life, convinced him to go with her so that he could seek help for his mental illness. On that cold, sleety February night, she drove him to St. Mary’s hospital in Minneapolis, where he admitted himself into the Psychiatric ward to receive the help he needed.
When Marie talked about this with her brothers and sister, they were angry with her. This man had destroyed her life and the life of their children. She would have been justified to have slam the door in his face. I asked her why she had helped him. She replied to me, “I saw in his face, the face of the suffering Christ. How could I say no to the presence of Christ within him?” I said to her that not many people in similar circumstances would not have been as compassionate as her. She replied to me, “I forgave him a long time ago the horrible wrong that he did to me and our children. However, I have not forgotten what he did. Forgiving is different from forgetting.” I replied to her, “Marie, the worst thing that ever happened to you was your divorce. And, the best thing that ever happened to you was your divorce. It was through that suffering you experienced that you have become the tremendous person you are today.”
How do we fulfill Jesus’ command to forgive others an infinite number of times? Marie’s words hold the key. When we are able to see in the face of those who wrong us, the face of Jesus, how can we not forgive as Jesus forgives and continues to forgive, an infinite number of times?
