Homily on the Gospel passage Matt. (18:23-35)
There is a strange economy in human relationships. We remember with precision what is owed to us, and much more faintly what has been granted to us as a gift. A word spoken at the wrong time, a message left unanswered, the absence of someone exactly when we needed them, an old injustice that continues to move within us like a small piece of furniture in a dark room, which we stumble upon even when we thought we had forgotten it. In modern life, in fact, the ledger has become almost technically precise. There are dates, saved conversations, photographs, receipts. Memory has acquired a hard drive. And so, the parable of the ten thousand talents, with the king who decides to settle accounts with his servants, comes closer to us than we would like. Because Christ uses the language of debt to touch something that is difficult to measure: the way one person carries another within them.
The first debtor owes ten thousand talents; the amount approaches the limits of the unthinkable, almost ceasing to function as a real economic figure and becoming an image of a life that cannot, on its own, repay what it has received, what it has squandered, or whom it has wounded. Despite all this, he promises to repay everything. Human words, somewhat desperate. Deep down, he knows he cannot. However, his master, “being moved with compassion, released him and forgave the debt” (Matt. 18:27). The debt vanishes without negotiation, without settlement, without fine print at the end of the agreement. Here lies one of the darkest rooms of our minds, because humans have become accustomed to understanding reciprocity more easily. You did something, you will receive something. You destroyed something, you will pay for it. Forgiveness enters this logic like water through a crack and erases the numbers before we can recount them.
Then, the now-free servant goes out on the road. That is where the truly disturbing thing happens. He finds a fellow servant who owes him a hundred denarii and grabs him by the throat. The distance between ten thousand talents and a hundred denarii is enormous, but the parable is not merely interested in an arithmetic exaggeration. It shows how quickly the memory of a gift can fade when the wound that affects us personally appears before us. Just a few minutes ago, he was pleading on his knees. Now, he hears almost the same words from another mouth, “be patient with me” (Matt. 18:29), and he does not recognize them. His own voice returned to him as a stranger and did not touch him. This perhaps happens more often than we imagine in families, in friendships, even within church life, where people who know very well how much they have needed mercy can become extremely precise when examining the fault of someone else.
Strange is the amnesia of benevolence; the awareness that we ourselves were once low, exposed, and dependent on someone's patience does not always last long. Daily life quickly rebuilds the old defenses. Dignity, the need for vindication, that persistent “he owes me”—sometimes referring to money, sometimes to an apology, an acknowledgment, or an explanation that was never given—steps in. There are people who wait years for a single phrase. And as long as it remains unsaid, its absence grows, taking up its own chair in the house. Sometimes, the other person has completely forgotten the incident, while you have maintained it with such care that you almost fear what will remain if you let it go.
At this point, the thought of Saint Gregory Palamas becomes particularly penetrating. When a person errs themselves, they usually expect patience and forgiveness from their neighbor, because it seems just and natural to them then. The same attitude, Palamas essentially says, ought to be turned toward the other, so that what we reasonably ask for ourselves becomes the measure of our own behavior.[1] This observation touches on a very common trait: we are lenient interpreters of our own motives and meticulous readers of the actions of others. For our own harsh words, we remember the fatigue, the pressure, and what preceded them that day. For their words, we remember primarily the words themselves.
Forgiveness, of course, touches something deeper than psychological relief. Christ directly links our relationship with God to our relationship with our debtor. In the Lord's Prayer, the request is almost dangerously specific: “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). A person puts a measure into their own prayer that exposes them. They ask for mercy and, simultaneously, mention what they do with the mercy that has already passed through their hands. Perhaps that is why forgiveness from the heart is so difficult. It involves a movement that reaches as far as where the wound is kept along with its history, and there, arguments somewhat lose their power. It is like being locked in an empty room. However, the key lies in the heart.
The verse “from your hearts” (Matt. 18:35) does not describe forgetting. There are things that are not forgotten, and perhaps a person does not need to forget them. Memory also has a protective function, especially when it has been preceded by abuse, betrayal, or repeated harm. Forgiveness can coexist with boundaries, with distance, with a door that remains closed because something fragile is kept behind it. What changes is deeper—the demand that the other person pays within us indefinitely. That they always remain tied to the same error. That we do not allow them, even within our own thoughts, to become anything more than that one act they committed.
And the tormentors at the end of the parable have a dark contemporary relevance. The person who incessantly keeps the account eventually begins to be tormented by the account itself. They return to conversations, reconstruct scenes, add answers they could have given, and re-try a case that has been externally closed for years. The other person may be sleeping peacefully, but the former remains in the old room, moving the same objects, with no exit yet.
Perhaps the harshest detail of the parable lies exactly there: that the unmerciful servant had already been freed. He could have left, returned home, and seen the world differently because life had just been granted to him. And yet, he took the logic of the prison with him and applied it to the first person he encountered. Sometimes this happens to us as well. Space, time, forgiveness, and a second chance have been given to us, yet within us, the old keys continue to be heard. God's mercy has opened the door, while the hand persists for a little longer in searching for the lock.
References:
[1] Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, *The Found Things*, Patrologiæ Græce, vol. 151, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1865), p. 457: “So many and such great talents I owe to God, and having asked only for patience, and having received from Him a perfect remission of the debt, then, asking patience from a fellow servant for a small debt of silver [...] will you not readily grant it?” URL: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Patrologiae_cursus_completus/njVS3CEPCT0C?hl=el&gbpv=1