Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ.
What would you do if you got a million dollars? Maybe you play in a lottery and win the jackpot. That amount would be ok. We could still handle a million. A new car, a house, a solar system on the roof. That would be a sum we could still manage.
But when it comes to sums in the billions, it's much more difficult. How many years would someone with average earnings have to work to earn one billion (say gross)? 30,000 years! Our history does not go back that long at all. All people in Schuyler, roughly estimated, work for one year to collectively earn following amount: 7000 (Inhabitants of Schuyler, including children, retired people) x $2500 (average income per month) x 12 (months) = $210,000,000. You see, not even half a billion.
Now, when dealing with various government expenditures (health care, pensions, military, etc.) juggling billions of dollars, it is beyond our imagination. It is also beyond the imagination of the very richest. (The only good thing about it is that this lack of comparability usually prevents envy.) Whether 1 billion, 10 or 100 billion - it is immeasurably much, at the same time incredible much, simply "super rich" (in contrast to us here, at least by these standards) - and just as incomprehensible is how one can "earn" that in one lifetime.
However, talking about envy, if my neighbor gets 10,000 or 30,000 dollars more than I do, or leases a car for 60,000 dollars, or if someone receives 400 dollars in social welfare or housing assistance, this creates envy - why does he/she get what I don't?
COMPARE
The parable Jesus tells here is such a calculation example. The first servant owes 10,000 talents - the number is within the range of the imaginable, the value however not: this sum corresponds to 60 million denarii, i.e. 60 million daily earnings of a day laborer at the time of Jesus, 164,000 annual earnings. Converted to today's conditions, in which we earn relatively more, this would be more than 5 billion dollars. How could this servant have accumulated these unbelievable debts? (Question in the first place: Why did he get this loan?) This is not so much about specific sums as it is about illustration. And the second servant, he owes 100 days' wages, or about $10,000 (by today's standards). Peanuts in comparison, and well imaginable for us to owe someone this sum, for example to buy a used car or a kitchen. It's a lot of money that you wouldn't want to do without if you lent it out. The former sum is quickly forgotten when we hear what the debt of the latter amounts to. So Jesus picks us up with this parable in our everyday dealings with money. At the time of Jesus, many were bitterly dependent on every single denarius, on every single day's earnings.
AS GOD IS TO ME, SO AM I TO YOU
But what Jesus wants to talk about is not money, but the immeasurable goodness and mercy of God: But God asks you: Even if you are deeply in debt to God and God forgives you everything, without any compensation, why are you, O person, so ungenerous, and hold every fault against your fellow neighbor and do not forgive?
An infinite number of times (that's what this "77 times" stands for) you can forgive others until you have shown – will never happen, actually - the same forgiveness with the faults, offenses and injuries of others that God exercises with you.
“As God does to me, so do I to you”, must be your motto! In describing here how severely God deals with the unforgiving, the harsh, the small-minded, those who will not forgive, the evangelist Matthew makes clear the importance of forgiveness in a community struggling to survive. When in communities (and also in societies) divisions remain, people no longer speak to each other. The divisions that bring unjust distribution of wealth, global inequality.
If we humans do not find ways to each other like here in the parable, if rich people do not give away something of their goods and share life opportunities, it will be difficult for all to survive. Today, laws and international regulations should take care of that. But God gives us an enormous number of new beginnings, again and again we may try to reach out to others and forgive them whatever we ourselves mess up.
Christ tells a much more drastic example, but the question certainly applies to me as well: Shouldn't I be more merciful myself if I expect others to be merciful to me? So how a disciple of Christ behaves in a Christian way is not only a question of the right directives and commandments. It has a great deal to do with my own "basic attitude."
This concerns the big questions in the church: With which basic attitude do we meet people and interpret the directives of the church for them? Here, too, we should not judge too quickly and, above all, judge too harshly!!! And it concerns the very human small things of my everyday life. Often enough we look too much at these small things. The example of Jesus with this unimaginable amount of money shows us that Jesus thinks in incomparable dimensions when he thinks about forgiveness, about mercy! And it opens up our view to solidarity. One alone can’t earn such a huge sum of money. But if we look to our systems of solidarity, health, insurances, even our work in the Mission House, we live on solidarity. One alone can’t build a hospital. But if 10.000 people share the burden, it will be possible. We can take the example of that servant with the biggest loan as an image of the solidarity of Christians.
The basic attitude to which Christ invites us in the Gospel is that of mercy. It allows real forgiveness, a conversion in behavior and a new chance for my life the unimaginable is brought before our eyes today. Unimaginable the mercy of God and unimaginable what God could do with us if we only open ourselves for him.
- Prior, Fr. Anastasius Reiser, OSB
