(Ecclesiasticus 27:30-28:7; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35)
Our Gospel reading today is very familiar, but don't let that fact lead you into a semi-dormant ‘'we've heard all this before’' attitude of mind; for today’s short passage from the Gospel -- inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit -- leads us to a fount of purest water. So, let us direct our particular attention to the first two verses of the Gospel reading:
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”.
Why
did Jesus give such an enigmatic answer?
Because He intended to show Peter the abhorrently
evil root of any wilful refusal-to-forgive, of any and every nurtured-desire-for-revenge.
Not seven times, but seventy-seven
times, those words are to be found first in the book of Genesis (4:23-24),
in one of Israel's most ancient traditions:
Lamech
said to his wives: "Adah and
Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my utterance! For I have killed a man for wounding me, even
a young man for bruising me. If Cain is
avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times."
According
to the Scriptures, Lamech was the great-great-great-grandson of Cain, and in
the verses preceding the words I have just quoted we read of great progress
being made in the quality of life for the family of Cain: a city had been built
by him, and we heard of livestock being raised, of artisans making tools of all
kinds from bronze and iron, and -- for times of public rejoicing and personal
pleasure -- there were players of harp and flute. As we would say today, the economy was
flourishing.
But,
with the growth of prosperity and greater opportunities to seek and find not
only what was necessary and good but also what was pleasurable and even addictive,
there came also an alarming growth in wickedness and sin. Cain the original sinner had begged God’s
protection lest he himself be killed in revenge for his murdering of his own
brother Abel, an action he learned to regret.
However,
when we look at his great-great-great grandson Lamech, we find him actually glorying
in and boasting about the fact of his having killed a man for merely wounding
him, indeed, even killing a young man or boy for simply bruising him. Lamech’s criminally insane pride culminated
in his boast that whoever crossed him would pay for it, and that he
alone, Lamech -- not God! -- would decide both the price to be paid and the
person to pay it. He vaunted the
irrevocability of his decision and the inevitability of its fulfilment by
invoking the traditional tribal and family reverence for the founding father by
those words:
If
Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.
Devilish
pride, coupled with a vicious and vengeful attitude, characterised Lamech: that was the way he ruled his family. And he was not alone in that, for the society
of which he was part developed along similar lines until, eventually, it called
down its own destruction by the God-sent flood.
Lamech – the end or ‘culmination’ of the Cainite line -- had become a
‘pus-laden’ boil of pride and violence in the old, pre-flood, world.
Now
we ourselves -- or at least some of us -- have ‘in our days’ seen, and are
still hearing of, Lamech-like things in Russian aggression – or rather in Putin
aggression’ – and in, for example, Sicilian Mafioso society, Mexican gang-rule and
drug culture, the handful of old IRA intransigents in Northern Ireland, and going
back via Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and Idi Amin, we can still recall with
horror Stalin's horrendous cruelty towards his own people, and Hitler's totally
consuming hatred for all things Jewish.
Awareness of such depths of human depravity can,
perhaps, help us appreciate more seriously something of the importance and the
significance of Jesus' reply to Peter’s somewhat
jocular exaggeration :
Lord,
if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven
times?
And,
if that is the case, we may also learn to gratefully admire, and deeply rejoice
in, the vision and insight of Jesus Who knew both the heights of divine wisdom
to be found in but a few words of Sacred Scripture, and also the depths and horrendous
possibilities of human frailty and sinfulness, if subject to Satan’s unchecked poisonous
administrations.
Peter
and the Apostles had been cleansed by the word Jesus had spoken to them and
they were to receive new and heavenly life by the Holy Spirit Who would be
poured out upon the Church after their Lord's Death and Resurrection. In the
meantime, they were being trained to proclaim and proffer His redemption to the
whole of mankind, which, despite its own native frailty, was to be re-destined
and endowed-anew for heavenly fulfilment in the Church of Jesus to be built on the
Rock of Peter’s witness and the fidelity of the Apostles’ proclamation. The flood-waters of destruction and death which
destroyed the gross wickedness of Lamech and his world, were never to be repeated. Many men would and will continue to destroy
themselves by their headlong pursuit of power and pleasure, but the Flood was
to be replaced by a far greater outpouring of waters, this time the healing
waters of grace, the most sublime juice dripping from the perennially-fruitful-tree
of Jesus’ Cross. Jesus wanted Peter and
the Apostles -- as He also wants us -- to realize that they must have total, absolute, confidence in the
presence in their own lives, and in the Church, of the intransigent forgiveness
and redemptive-power of Him Who loves us as none but He -- our only True Father
-- can, by sending His Son to become-one-of-us-for-us, and by His most sublime Gift
of the Holy Spirit of Truth and Power.
We
are all sinners redeemed by Jesus, and even the best of us are only earthenware
vessels, as St. Paul says:
We
have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be
of God and not of us (2
Corinthians 4:7);
and,
on the basis of that natural fragility and God-graced humility, forgiveness ought
to be an absolutely basic, and therefore characteristic, Christian virtue. Unforgiving
vengefulness constitutes for us a most
outrageous sin and comprehensive defeat at the hands of Satan, as we heard in
our first reading:
Forgive
your neighbour the hurt he does you, and when you pray, your own sins will be
forgiven.
If one who is but flesh
cherishes wrath (harbours resentment); who will forgive him his
sins?
That is why Jesus, on being questioned
by Peter who mentioned the number seven which, for the Jews, was a number of completion
and perfection, replied so firmly:
I do not say to you, up to seven
times, but up to seventy times seven.
This
sort of thing goes back to the very beginning, and reaches to the very heart of
man, Jesus is saying. Recognize the
signs of your adversary, Satan, whose deceits of old brought about the
destruction of those he led astray into pride and viciousness, Lamech above all. For you are called to be – in Me -- a new
creation, and the perfection of that new creation must so great that seven can
no longer declare, only seventy-seven can suggest, anything of the supreme
wonder and beauty of the heavenly life, which can even begin here-on-earth for
you and all My true disciples.
The
devil is still at work, dear friends in Christ; still trying to undermine and
disfigure God's new creation and your souls too; but, having seen in Lamech
whither Satan would lead you, be firm against him and strong in Me and, by My
Spirit in you, be prepared to forgive whoever may have -- wherever and whenever
-- wronged you,
Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
