Seventy-seven times …
For many of us, the hardest work we will ever do is the work of forgiveness.
In the Gospel for this Sunday, St. Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?”
Jesus responds, “I say to you not seven times but seventy-seven times.”
For Peter, seven times seems to be a lot: “As many as …”
And then there is the Lord, “… seventy-seven times.”
Jesus is taking St. Peter and each of us, deeper into the mystery of forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness is a mystery. Peter wants to see it as a transaction. People who treat forgiveness as a transaction have no idea how deep the pain from some wounds goes.
In the mystery of forgiveness, what forgiveness is not, is almost as important as what forgiveness is.
- Forgiveness is not a "letting off the hook" of those who have wounded us;
- Forgiveness is not saying what happened to us was or is okay;
- Forgiveness is not a feeling;
- Forgiveness is not “getting over” anything;
- Forgiveness is also not the result of willpower;
- Forgiveness is not a linear transaction that resets anything;
- Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Reconciliation involves two or more people. Forgiveness involves one person who seeks healing.
- One of the most important sentences I read this year read, “Forgiveness is a decision. Not an eraser.” by the author Lysa Teerkeurst in Forgiving What You Can’t Forget.
Forgiveness is a decision we return to as often as the wound asks to be remembered.
Healing comes in layers, a direction we choose again when the pain resurfaces. Forgiveness is the momentum behind healing. Forgiveness is our more or less steady decision, with God’s grace, not to let the pain determine what we will and will not carry.
The wound we receive when we are hurt is, in some ways, the opposite of forgiveness. But the wound does not have the last word. Forgiveness announces a new word the full dimensions of which we don’t understand at first.
And those 77 times? It does mean we put forgiveness on automatic repeat.
What is the significance of 77?
In the Gospel of Luke there are listed 76 generational links from Adam to Jesus, but 77 names are listed when both Adam and Jesus are counted. When we forgive, in the name of Jesus, we forgive the offense all the way back, through all the generations, of every force and circumstance that led in any way to our being hurt. And we do it not to let someone off the hook. Not as an eraser.
But so that we can be more free each day.
God bless,
Msgr Brian Bransfield
