24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the LORD’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail. Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times? The Lord answered, not seven times but seventy seven times.

The theme on this weekend's readings hit close to home. It would be hard to imagine if there's any one among us that doesn't have any enemies or feelings of anger or hatred toward another person at any point in our life. But today's readings are a good reminder that to have our own sins forgiven by God, we also need to forgive those who have done us wrong. That is clearly illustrated in the parable that our Lord told and in the first reading. So how can we forgive? How do we let go of the anger and hatred we feel inside our hearts? Forget. I know, that's easier said than done. God doesn't remember our sins. He has an amnesia when it comes to it. He forgot Moses just killed an Egyptian before He called him. He forgot Peter denied him 3 times before the resurrection. I know we are familiar with video games or arcade games. When you lose a game, you simply reset it or put in new coins. You forget you just lost the game before and look forward to the new one. The previous game somehow was no longer important, you moved on from it right away. The only way we can forgive is to forget it ever happened. When we dwell upon it, we will never be able to forgive. There are things that are simply beyond our control. Things we can no longer go back to correct. Those things we need to forget. Life isn't fair most of the time. But if we look beyond life's unfairness, we can certainly receive God's peace with His forgiveness of our own wrongdoings.