The Lord be with you. Hear the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew. Glory be to thee, O Lord.

Peter said unto Jesus, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times. Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants.

And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment be made. The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, I will pay thee all.

Then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him a hundred pence. And he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me what thou owest.

And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not. But he went, and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.

So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told the Lord all that was done. Then his Lord, after he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desirest of me. Shouldest not thou have had compassion on thy fellow servant, as I even had pity on thee? And his Lord was wroth, and delivered him to the torment, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

For likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your heart forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. This is the gospel of the Lord. Praise be to thee, O Christ.

May it be given to me to speak in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Please do be seated.

When I was a pastoral assistant, I found myself struggling deeply with unforgiveness. I was under the care of a pastor and his wife, who, as later events showed, had mismanaged the scheme that I was on, and caused harm to many of us who were involved. After one particularly intrusive and humiliating episode, I told my priest that I didn't know how I would be able to come to the Eucharist and be truly forgiving when I felt so angry and hurt.

He said something surprising. Drown them in the chalice. What he meant was that I should bring them with me to the altar rail, not pretending that nothing had happened, nor suppressing my hurt, but offering the whole painful tangle to Jesus.

It was a reminder that forgiveness doesn't begin in our own strength. It begins with the grace of Jesus' sacrifice, where he takes the weight of what has been done to us and carries it in his own self-offering. That experience, and many others beside, taught me that forgiveness is a journey, and it's a hard one.

We all have moments where forgiveness feels beyond us. Sometimes the harm that other people do to us is deep. Sometimes it's long-standing.

Sometimes the same wounds are reopened again and again by the same person or people. It is in places like this that Jesus' teaching on forgiveness becomes so challenging, but also so necessary. St. Peter clearly knew the struggle to forgive.

In the Gospel, he asked Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who kept on injuring him. As many as seven times. Knowing Peter's temperament, as it's clear in the Gospels, we can almost imagine here the exasperation behind the question.

He probably felt that he was being generous, offering at least seven times. But Jesus' answer overturned his calculation entirely. I say unto you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.

To be clear, he wasn't giving a number, 490 forgivenesses. He was revealing the shape of divine life. Forgiveness for those who follow him isn't limited or counted.

It flows simply from the eternal mercy of God. To express this, Jesus told a parable of the unforgiving servant. The servant had been forgiven an impossible debt.

10,000 talents. We might as well say a billion pounds. And yet, when he was forgiven and came across a fellow servant who owed him 100 pence, let's say a tenner, he refused to forgive.

The Lord, being angry with the servant who had been forgiven the impossible debt, refused to continue in that forgiveness. And the servant, by his own unforgiveness, ended up in prison. The point isn't, as it might seem on the surface, simply that we ought to forgive because we have been forgiven, though this is true.

It is that mercy, once received, is meant to reshape us. Those who live in God's forgiveness are supposed to be drawn into a life that reflects that forgiveness. Of course, this is where we must be careful.

To say that we must forgive does not mean that people can't injure us. They can. Sometimes those injuries take years to heal.

Forgiveness doesn't require denying harm or minimising it or restoring a relationship that continues to hurt us. Sometimes the first step towards peace and forgiveness is changing the shape of our relationships, ending a person's ability to keep on hurting us. Boundaries, distance, protection of one's well-being, they're not failures of forgiveness.

They are part of the healing process that makes forgiveness possible. Nor indeed does forgiveness eliminate the value of repentance or the good of reconciliation. When a person has hurt us and they come and say sorry, restoration can grow.

It isn't unforgiveness to want an apology. Where it's not possible, though, forgiveness means entrusting that justice belongs to God, that judgement cannot belong to us, that bitterness has no place in our hearts. Jesus' parable about the unforgiving servant is stark, to say the least.

The man once forgiven found himself again in prison, again unforgiven his impossible debt because of his refusal to join in the mercy of the Lord. But the church has long understood that Jesus' parable, his words, they're not a threat, they're a description of reality. God is eternally drawing us into his own life and his life is mercy, it is forgiveness.

So when we refuse mercy, when we refuse forgiveness, not in our struggles but in a deliberate hardening of heart, then we are refusing to participate in the divine life. It's not then that God withholds forgiveness so much as we close ourselves off to forgiveness. It's not that God refuses to forgive if we do not forgive.

It's that if we cannot make a step towards forgiveness, then we close ourselves off to forgiveness altogether. And this makes forgiveness not a single act but a lifelong work of the spirit within us. Forgiveness of our sins, of our failings is a lifelong pattern and our forgiveness will be slow, sometimes painful.

The important thing is that we must not feel like we have to be instantly healed or reconciled to those who've hurt us. Simply that our heart has to remain open to the movement of grace. Even the prayer, Lord help me to want to forgive, is a step into that flow of forgiveness in the life of God.

All that we do, including forgiveness, must take place within our relationship with God. Forgiving isn't an isolated moral effort. We forgive because we have been forgiven and in that forgiveness we have been drawn into God's life.

And because we are drawn into God's life, we ask that Christ would be beside us, that he would make the impossible possible, that he would help us to overcome even our deepest wounds and let go of bitterness. That road isn't easy, but it is the road that leads to freedom. To follow Christ is to step into his life of mercy.

And as we do, however slowly, however long it takes us, we will discover that forgiveness isn't something we produce, but something that God produces in us. May we have the grace to forgive as we have been forgiven, the courage to bring our hurts to the altar and the hope in Jesus Christ, who is our forgiveness and our life. Amen.