7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel, to be read together with St. Matthew’s (cf. Mt 5:38-48), invites us to have the soul of a giant and to be magnanimous;1 to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us and praying for those who slander us (cf. Lk 6:27-28).
St. Augustine2 says that it is a greater work to make the wicked righteous than to create Heaven and earth, because both creating and forgiving require equal power, but forgiving requires greater mercy. And St. Thomas Aquinas3 says that forgiveness is the greatest manifestation of divine omnipotence.
Thus, in the desert of Ziph, David had his greatest enemy and persecutor, King Saul, in his hands. However, even though he knew that God had delivered him into his power, he did not want to stretch out his hands against the Lord’s anointed (cf. 1 Sm 26:22), teaching that forgiveness belongs to the great!
Later, the prophet-king would sing that the “Lord is merciful and gracious” (cf. Ps 103:8), showing that forgiveness means forgetting, healing and giving new life. Forgiveness, therefore, makes us share in God’s own omnipotence, who does not “deal with us according to our sins,” but “remove[s] our transgressions from us” (cf. Ps 103:10, 12).
Nevertheless, Jesus’ school goes further. With the authority of the Supreme Lawgiver, He admonishes: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you” (Lk 6:36-38). And St. Paul invites those in Corinth to be a mirror of Jesus because, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of Heaven” (1 Cor 15:49).
It should be emphasized, however, that forgiveness does not mean condoning evil. Forgiveness has one condition: repentance. In chapter 18 of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Our Lord lays down the roadmap for fraternal correction, because mercy without justice is complicity and connivance with the devil, the world and the flesh.
Finally, we must remember that in Mary Immaculate, God anticipated forgiveness by exempting Her from original sin. In the Blessed Virgin, exclaims St. Lawrence of Brindisi, the Lord “worked wonders, but singular wonders, because Mary’s greatness exceeds all created greatness beyond comparison.”4 God has forgiven men many sins, but as for Our Lady, He has made it impossible for Her to commit any. ◊
Notes
1 “A man is said to be magnanimous chiefly because he is minded to do some great act” (ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiæ. II-II, q.129, a.1).
2 Cf. ST. AUGUSTINE. Tratados sobre o Evangelho de São João. Tratado 72, n.3.
3 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, op. cit., I, q.25, a.3, ad 3.
4 ST. LAWRENCE OF BRINDISI. Alabanzas e invocaciones a la Virgen Madre de Dios. Sermo IX, n.3. In: Marial. Madrid: BAC, 2004, p.309.
