Forgiving the Unforgivable Means You Will Be Forgiven

Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
"Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?"

Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. 

That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt.

At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.'
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.

When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
'Pay back what you owe.'
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
But he refused.
Instead, he had him put in prison
until he paid back the debt.

Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
they were deeply disturbed and went to their master
and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant!

I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?'

Then in anger, his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart."

MT 18:21-35

Are you starting to get the idea that forgiving someone for wronging you is important to your salvation?  Important, heck, it is vital.  In the parable, we see that the king is a kind king and moved with pity he forgives the servants large debt and lets him go his way.  The servant for his part meets one of the other servants who owes the former some money.  The man cannot pay so he had the debtor placed in prison until he could pay.  The other employees in the household must have liked the debtor because they reported what had happened to the king and he blew his stack.  He had the servant handed over to the torturers until he could pay what he owed because the servant did not imitate the king and forgive what was owed to him.  I have to tell you if this story doesn't scare you, then you are not reading it with the right frame of mind.  

My mother was a kind-hearted soul who always looked for happiness to come from the outside in.  She worked for a doctor and part of her compensation was that she was to receive free healthcare from the doctor.  The doctor she worked for could have cared less about her obligation to treat my mother.  Long story short, through carelessness this doctor misdiagnosed a growth on my mother's shoulder and treated it with medicated salve for six months to no avail.  My mother visited another friend, another respected physician,  who immediately saw that the growth was cancer.  My mother went into the hospital and the growth was removed and the prognosis was good.  Six months down the road, a scan revealed that cancer had, in fact, spread and was now terminal.  Her only hope was lung surgery.  On the day of surgery, her four children made it to the hospital in time to give her a loving send off.  She went to surgery knowing that she was a loved person.  The surgery was successful and the surgeon told us that it had probably bought Mom another year or more of life.  In her room, she was placed on a ventilator to help her breathe and she was alert and able to communicate by writing on a pad of paper.  She was a little better on post-op day two and I since I lived a good hour from the hospital, I took day three off and did not visit her.  On day four when I arrived at the hospital, Mom had slipped back.  She was still awake but not really alert.  She made no attempt at communication. By early afternoon her blood pressure started to drop and she was on full dopamine support to raise it. At 7:11 P.M. on the fourth-day post-op, Mom passed away with her four children by her side.  

The next few days were spent doing what was needed to get mom buried.  The whole thing seemed so unreal.  At the funeral home, I noticed two women sitting alone and to the side. I went over to them and introduced myself and thanked them for coming to the wake.   My sister Sandy, told me afterward not to talk to those two as the older woman was the doctor that had failed to treat my mother properly.  I said nothing to my sister, who is much more intelligent than I am but does not have the common sense God gave to a grasshopper.  But what she said planted a seed in me.  (I am NOT blaming her for what follows.)  I thought about my mother, dead at age sixty-four because of someone with the gift of healing did not think enough of her to take the trouble to treat her as if she was a paying patient and to use her skill as a doctor to help her. 

The seed started to germinate.  In the days after the funeral, once the excitement and non-stop requirement to do "things" had ended, there settled inside of me a deep and seething hatred of this so call doctor who, through a lack of caring in effect murdered my mother.  I had never in my life felt hatred so deep for someone who had hurt me.  Had I found the doctor on the ground, on fire, I would not have wasted a cold cup of coffee to put out the fire, that is how much I descended into the world of hate and loathing. 

  At the same time as I was learning to hate, I lost interest in just about everything.  I was an avid reader at the time, but now, I read the same book over and over so I didn't have to think.  The basic things a person needed to do to keep a household running were beyond me.  I was in the grip of depression and could find no way to get out of the hole I found myself in.  All the while, in my soul, was this bubbling cauldron of hate against the one who had stolen my mother from me.  

I was in this land of hate, doom, and gloom for six months.  One day I was driving to work and I passed a Catholic Church and as was my custom, I made the sign of the cross in honor of the Blessed Sacrament that I knew was contained inside those brick walls.  God infused His Spirit in me at that moment and I suddenly knew what the cause of all my problems was.  I asked the Lord to remove the hate for this woman of medicine and He did and I forgave her and at that moment the depression left me and life became brighter and I could once again see that there was a future.

Here are the reasons you need to forgive those who have hurt you. First of all, God commands it. The parable tells us that if we are to receive forgiveness for all that we have done, then we have to forgive those who have trespassed against us as well.  Next, to carry a grudge is to carry a key to hell.  Just like going to a fortune teller or believing in horoscopes, why give the devil a key to your soul? One thing is for certain, he is not afraid to use it and once you let him in the damage he can do is worse than the proverbial blind bull in a china shop!  The most important reason is that we have been forgiven of so many of our sins against the dignity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, can we claim that the sins committed against us were greater? 

Finally, one benefit I received when I forgave is that it became for me much harder to carry a grudge.  I forgave the killer of my mother.  What more can a human being do to me that would be a greater offense?  I try to forgive and forget and thank God that He intervened in my life in such a powerful manner. 

Purgatory exists and many are those that choose to go there.  Please pray for the poor souls.  Remember too that as they are perhaps one day you shall be.