Imitating God’s Boundless Mercy!

Sunday, September 13, 2026

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sir 27: 30-28:7; Rom 14: 7-9; Mt 18: 21-35

The twenty-fourth Sunday invites us to imitate the boundless mercy of God.

The three readings of the day facilitate our reflection on the theme from different angles.

The first reading underlines that a person becomes a sinner when s/he holds on to wrath and anger. An unforgiving nature is only a reflection of the sinner’s inner turmoil that refuses to count the blessings of God, who is boundless in mercy and love. It is for this reason that the virtuous are those who not only remember God’s mercy towards them but also act from the awareness of being forgiven by God, having the responsibility to disseminate God’s love and mercy. 

The text also highlights that forgiveness is not optional. Instead, for the holy and God-fearing, it is a mirror of the mercy we hope to receive from God. God’s people choose forgiveness not because we deny the wound that was inflected upon us but because we refuse to let that wound rule our hearts. The fact that God desires mercy (Hos 6:6) should continue to motivate our lives and actions. 

Yet another insight we gain from the text is to constantly examine and shape our lives from the perspective of impermanence and mortality. The shortness of human life should serve as a reminder for us to put aside sin and enmity and choose love and forgiveness. What gives new meaning and relevance is the fact that we have eternity in mind. 

The second reading carries an important reminder that Christians belong completely to Christ. Since we do not live or die for ourselves, living a life from a self-contained attitude only contradicts our vocation as a Christian. Since our lives are bound with others, we cannot live as isolated units, cut off from the rest of the community. A Christian faith community is one that lets love govern all of its action. Thus, in a broader context, the text is about putting an end to division among us. As people who have witnessed the Lord’s self-emptying love on the cross, we must stop judging and condemning others and focus on imitating the total selflessness of our Master. We are Christ’s true followers if we imitate him better. 

The Gospel text on the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant invites our reflection on what it means to forgive others from our heart. 

The text starts with Peter’s question to the Lord on forgiveness. The mention of the number ‘seven’ symbolized generosity of heart at the time. However, for Jesus, forgiving the other seven times would be barely enough, and this is why he pushes the bar further. For Jesus, forgiveness should imitate God’s generosity towards us instead of having any numerical limits. Viewed thus, for Jesus, forgiveness becomes a way of proclaiming God’s love itself. Hence, it should not be approached from the viewpoint of a checklist that we tick off every time after we forgive someone. 

It is to illuminate his listeners on the boundless mercy of God that Jesus teaches them a parable. Jesus, the master storyteller, makes the amount of debt purposefully astronomical and massive. The unmerciful servant fails to imitate the king in the parable. But that is not all. Jesus adds another nuance to the parable. 

When we carefully read the text, we find that the first servant does not ask the king to forgive him but only to be patient with him so that he would pay back everything. However, the king does much more than show patience. The king cancels out the servant’s massive amount of debt. Here, we must note that because the amount of debt is so huge, making it almost impossible for the servant to pay back, his promise to return it ‘in full’ is just a hollow promise, and therefore, what he says is a lie. Hence, we find the whole episode revealing another side of the unforgiving servant. 

However, what is more shocking to the readers about the unmerciful servant, the recipient of the king’s generous forgiveness, is that he is not moved to forgiveness, though his fellow servant owed him only a much smaller amount, and all he requires is patience because the amount he owed was well within the realm of possibility. Towards the end, we find that the forgiven servant is not even willing to be patient, let alone cancel the debt. It is ironic that the unmerciful servant, who wants his fellow servant to pay back the amount, throws him into prison, thus rendering him unable to pay back his debt, which was possible only if he worked.

Jesus gives this parable to remind us that real forgiveness begins with counting our blessings. Therefore, ‘How much we have been forgiven’ should become the basis for ‘how much we should forgive.’ Jesus means to tell us that when anger, resentment, and unforgiveness can become an internal prison unto themselves, what can liberate us truly is the joy of imitating God’s mercy. Viewed thus, forgiveness becomes a condition of the heart, mirroring the mercy we ourselves received.

If the three readings invite us to practice radical forgiveness, how can we make it possible? I believe that authentic faith gifts us with the courage to forgive. 

I like to cite the example of Corrie Ten Boom (1982-1993), a Christian Jew living in Holland during the Nazi occupation of the country. The deeply religious woman was firmly convinced that colluding with the Nazis was to become an accomplice to evil. Hence, the Christian woman, while helping the Jews hide and escape from arrest and deportation by the Nazi authorities, fiercely resisted the Nazi persecution by working closely with the Dutch resistance. However, a betrayal ruined her life and family. On a fateful night, a man named Jan Vogel, a Dutch informant, knocked on their door in great panic and terror. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he told them that his family was in danger of being taken away by the Nazis and the only possibility of saving them was by bribing a corrupt police officer. He begged Corrie’s family for valuable objects to pay the bribe. Totally clueless about who he was, Corrie’s family helped him with whatever they could possibly give. Before long, the family discovered it to be a trap. The man who begged them went to the Nazi police and betrayed Corrie’s family for assisting in his proposed escape. Corrie and all her family members were arrested, and they ended up in a German concentration camp. All her family members died there, leaving her to be the lone survivor by a clerical error. When she returned home after her release in 1944, Corrie spent a considerable length of time vigorously tracking down the man who had betrayed her family. She eventually found him. Her only reason for wanting to meet him was to forgive him. She was radically convinced that it was only through forgiveness, and not through resentment, that she could continue to live in freedom and peace of mind. It was she who said that ‘When He [Jesus] tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.’

Corrie’s life is a loud reminder that Jesus has not asked of us something impossible. There are countless examples to show that we can do it.

Let us pray that by imitating Jesus’ example from the cross, we may nurture forgiveness in us as a condition of our hearts. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar