“We are of the Lord”, Paul firmly affirms writing to the Romans. However, this radical relationship with the Lord is always mediated by our relationship with our brother. Those who remain angry with another man cannot ask the Lord for healing, says Ben Sirach, and sins are forgiven those who are able to forgive the offences of others against them. The parable of Jesus insists on this theme. God forgives in a gratuitous way, but the one who does not make it bear fruit in forgiveness towards others makes God’s forgiveness ineffective in his own life. Twice, in the story of Jesus, the expression “Have patience with me” (vv. 26 and 29) resounds. We should rather translate it as : “show me the breadth of your heart”. The breadth of God’s heart should expand the spaces of our life, to make them welcoming, free, available to welcome the other, even with his burden of sins. If this does not happen, our heart, from an open and wide house, becomes narrow and cramped like the cell of a prison, which imprisons us with the chains remind us today from Sirach: those of our revenge, of our grudges, of our own hatred. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is a school of freedom because it extends our life according to the breadth of God’s heart. Not seven, but seventy times seven!

Commentary by Comunità di Dumenza

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey