Save as PDFIn the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
Today the Evangelic parable tells us about the servant who owed the king ten thousand talents. This is a great sum of money. At that time one could buy a house with furniture only for one silver talent. The servant had no means of paying and so expected serve punishment. But he threw himself down at his master’s feet, with the words, “Be patient with me and I will pay the whole sum” (Mt. 18, 26). And the king felt so sorry for him that he let him go and cancelled the debt.
But what is the servant doing? When he went out, he happened to meet a fellow-servant who owed him only one hundred denarii, and he seized him by the throat and began to throttle him, saying, “Pay what you owe me”. His fellow-servant fell at his feet and appealed to him, saying, “Be patient with me and I will pay you”. But the other didn’t agree; on the contrary, he had him thrown into prison till he should pay the debt. The king learnt about it, got angry and said to him, “You wicked servant, I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me. Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow-servant just as I had pity on you?” And in his anger the king handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. (Mt. 18, 32-33)
We are forever indebted to God. We pray in the Church as brothers and sisters in Christ, praise God in song, receive the Communion together. But very often after leaving the Church we, meeting those who did wrong to us, are uncompromising to them, though their trespasses against us don’t cost even one denarii in comparison with our sins. So God having mercy to us when we confess our sins before Him, and granting us remission of our sins, seeing in future our heartlessness and hard-heartedness towards offenders among friends or our acquaintances, again lead us to new temptation, according to the word of the Savior, “And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive you brother from you heart”.
When someone made us angry, grieved or offended us, we must keep ourselves from indignation, must recall our great debt before God; let’s think how great is this debt in comparison with insignificant debts of our offenders towards us. If appealing to God, in prayers to Him and especially in the sacrament of confession about generosity to us, we receive forgiveness, won’t we show generosity towards our offenders, won’t we pray for them to keep our hearts pure.
We fight with a sin, but we have a lot of sins and offence, and if we don’t forgive each other, evil remains and is accumulated in the world, and penetrates the Church which stops being of Christ because of that. Christian people is not the people of force, this is the people who believes Jesus Christ who came to seek and save the perished ones. This is the people who got forgiveness, and because of that they are called to bring the Holy Gospel of God’s forgiveness to all people. The Apostle says, “Don’t be mastered by evil, but master evil with good” (Rome 12, 21), – then the Lord will give mercy to us not only in this age but also in future life. Only Merciful ones will be given mercy. Amen.