(Audio)
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
This debtor does not desire to receive mercy. He desires only deferment until he can earn enough by his own abilities to repay the king. This was a bad way to begin because before the king called him to account "he had no way of paying it back" and he still didn't after the accounting began. All he had then was the desperation of everything seeming to depend on him.
Do we approach mercy is if it is a temporary fix, so we can be good again, and stand on our own two feet? Or do we receive mercy as a lifelong reality that we can never do without? Do we go to confession and then come out thinking that now that the slate is clean we can actually get it right ourselves? Or do we realize that confession provides a grace of mercy that continues even after we leave the Church? It is opening ourselves to the reality that we can never escape the debt of the king. We need not. He delights in generosity. He delights to give to those who cannot repay.
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
When we realize that everything comes from mercy we can be merciful to others. The desperation that comes from being self-centered dissolves. We are able to forgive without limits and to love without protecting what we imagine to be our own.
Remember that your compassion, O LORD,
and your kindness are from of old.
In your kindness remember me,
because of your goodness, O LORD.
Mercy is entirely gratuitous. When we realize this, and stop trying to earn it, we become able to depend on it, even when times get tough, even in the midst of the flames of the hardest circumstances.
Azariah stood up in the fire and prayed aloud:
“For your name’s sake, O Lord, do not deliver us up forever,
or make void your covenant.
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