The Grace of Forgiveness (11th Sunday Ordinary C)

No doubt one of the most profound, liberating, and even life-changing human experiences is the joy of being forgiven. We just have to recall our own experiences of being forgiven in order to realize that the greater the offense we acknowledge to have done, the deeper is our sense of gratitude for being freed from its burden through forgiveness.

Today’s readings invite us to reflect even more deeply on our experience of the grace of forgiveness. We shall focus on three things: The recognition of sin as essential to the experience of forgiveness shown in the story of King David; the heart-warming tears of repentance illustrated by the sinful woman in the Gospel reading; and gratitude as our loving response to being forgiven as taught by the parable of the two debtors.

Recognition of Sin. The first reading (2 Sm 12:7-10, 13) recalls how the Prophet Nathan reminded David of God’s goodness to him—anointing him as king, rescuing him from the hand of Saul, giving him the house of Israel and Judah, and many other countless blessings. At the same time, Nathan reminded David that despite God’s graciousness, David had spurned the Lord and done evil in God’s sight by plotting the death of Uriah and ultimately taking the latter’s wife, Bathsheba, as his own.

The fact that David needed a prophet to be told of his sins shows that He had been spiritually blind. While, as a king, he had been enjoying the favor and blessings of God, he was practically unaware of the evil of his maneuverings in the sight of this gracious God.  Sin blinds. Our habit of sins renders us incapable of seeing the evil in what we do. The worst situation is precisely what’s going on now in our contemporary milieu—the loss of the sense of sin. People just want to do whatever they please without regard to moral principles.  We hear this being said too often: “How can this be wrong when it feels soooo right?”

It is only when David recognized his sins that he was assured of God’s forgiveness. “I have sinned against the Lord” (v. 13). To this confession, Nathan responded with assurance of God’s mercy. The grace of forgiveness abounds.  It is given, however, only to those who have recognized their sinfulness.  In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the penitent names and confesses his offenses. It surely is embarrassing to oneself but it is at the same time empowering. By naming and confessing, the penitent get holds of his sins and not the other way around. Recognizing our sinfulness, naming and confessing our sins liberate us from our spiritual blindness and enables us to see the graciousness of God and hence experience the grace of forgiveness.

The Tears of Repentance. The gospel reading (Lk 7:36—8:3) presents an illuminating contrast between the gate-crasher sinful woman and the Pharisee, Jesus’ host for the dinner.  The woman came in weeping and started to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears! She wiped them with her hair, kissed them and anointed them with expensive perfumed oil; while the Pharisee had not offered this customary hospitality to his guest. The lavishness of the woman’s expression of sorrow and devotion to Jesus is reflective of both the depth of her repentance for her great sins and her faith in God’s mercy; while the coldness with which the Pharisee received the Lord manifests the Pharisee’s self-righteous stance—a stance that rendered him incapable of seeing his own need for repentance and forgiveness, much like the blindness of David to his sins.  This same stance gives him the self-endowed right to condemn and distance himself from sinners.

Like the sinful woman in the gospel, we are invited by the Lord to a genuine repentance of our sins.  If we should weep, so be it. The tears of repentance reveal both the sincerity of our acceptance of our sinfulness and the depth of our yearning to experience the mercy of God. At the same time, the Lord warns us against self-righteousness because it is the surest way to forfeit by default God’s abundant offer of the grace of forgiveness.

Gratitude as our Loving Response.  The parable of the two debtors--one with a large debt, the other with smaller debt—who experienced being forgiven as both of them are unable to pay, illustrates the point that the degree of gratitude and love evoked by the experience of forgiveness is directly proportionate to the amount of the debt forgiven.  Between the two debtors, the one whose debt is much larger expresses greater gratitude to the creditor who forgives. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.

We should not fear approaching the Lord for mercy as we realize how great a sinner we are.  The greater the burden of sins lifted, the greater is our gratitude, our joy, our yearning to love God in return.  No wonder most of the saints consider themselves as great sinners and their lives have shown the greatness of their love for God.

What is our invitation? We are invited to overcome our self-righteousness which hinders us from experiencing the abundance of God’s mercy and to acknowledge our sinfulness with tears of repentance. This is not, however, to make of us a community of guilt-ridden Christians but a community who can love lavishly because of the freedom experienced through the grace of forgiveness.