Joke: Pastor’s temptation and policeman’s forgiveness: In a large city, a priest parked his car in a no-parking zone because he couldn't find a metered space. He put a note under the windshield wiper that read: "I have circled the block 100 times. If I don't park here, I'll miss my appointment. Forgive us our trespasses." When he returned, he found a citation from a police officer along with this note: "I've circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket, I'll lose my job. Lead us not into temptation."

In all of today’s readings, the Church invites us to examine ourselves through the Gift of Forgiveness. Is there such a gift for forgiveness? What gift do we receive when we forgive someone?

In today’s first reading, the author of the book of Sirach or Ecclesiastes, believed to be Ben Sira, gives us a portion of the definition of sin saying, “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” In other words, when we are content with wrath and anger, hatred and resentment, we are the best friends with sin. How do we unfriend with sin just as when we don’t like someone on Facebook, we unfriend him or her? When we don’t want those unwanted phone calls or unwanted text messages, we unfriend them by blocking them. Even blocking, somehow they are still able to call us again with different numbers. Welcome to our modern technologies. So, when we don’t like this person or that person, we unfriend them on Facebook, to block their messages or phone calls from our phone. What if we want to unfriend sin, how would we do it? Ben Sira invites us to do ourselves a favor reported in today’s First Reading saying, “Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.” In other words, forgive others who sin against you; and when you pray, your sin will be forgiven. You will be able to unfriend with sin when you learn to forgive others. Does it sound familiar to us? Especially, those of us who recite the rosary every day, or at least, when we come to Mass, we hear this prayer at every Mass? It is the Lord’s Prayer. In it, we pray, “Forgive us our trespass it, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In other words, unless we forgive those who trespass against us, we will not be forgiven of our trespasses. We cannot unfriend with sin when we have difficulty to forgive others. So, to be forgiven, we ought to learn to forgive others. How many times do we have to forgive those who trespass against us?

In today’s Gospel, Matthew reminds us of a short conversation between Peter and Jesus on the subject of forgiveness when he asks Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus responds to him saying, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Does it mean to forgive those who hurt us seventy times seven equals 490 times? Or is it seventy times seventy equals 4900 times? Wrong. It is seventy times seventy times seventy for seven times, and the result of it is huge. Therefore, to forgive seventy-seven times means to forgive indefinitely. How do we do this? Exactly. How? Unless we forgive and forget those who hurt us somehow or in some way, we still haven’t forgiven them yet. We might just forgive them from our lips only if we cannot forget the hurt and the pain that they brought to us. What does it mean to forget? Forget doesn’t mean to completely forget what happens to us, but it means the moment that we remember it, the moment that it does not make us mad, angry, hate, or try to revenge. The moment that we see ourselves angry, hateful, and irritated towards the one that we say we forgive, the moment that we still hold his or her sin against us.

During my second year in Theology School, I volunteered to do a ministry to the prisoners at the Federal Detention Center in Downtown Houston. A prisoner once shared her moment of conversion to Christianity after spending some time in that prison’s cells. She said that when she first came, she was mad and didn’t accept her sentence in prison. However, through participating in the Bible Study group, she slowly recognized her false and slowly converted from Buddhism to Christianity. She even changed the name of the facility from Federal Detention Center to a new name Faith Development Center. In this center, she had a chance to develop and grow in her faith in following Christ’s teaching. How difficult it was for her at first because she couldn’t forgive those who put her in that facility. She could only forgive them when she realized that it was her false that she ended up in there. It was through her recognition of her false that she was able to learn to forgive those who put her in prison. It was then through the gift of forgiveness that she learned the faith in following Christ.

How does the Lord Jesus teach us concerning forgiveness? How do we forgive one another? Ask your parents and learn from them. Why? Children, sons, and daughters, how many times have you lied to your parents, given an attitude, or even hated your parents, someone might even unfriend your parents, and others might even hurt your parents financially and mentally. Guess what, your parents still forgive you time after time. For our parents, if you have difficulty forgiving your children, learn to forgive like the Lord Jesus Christ. Can you imagine if God holds on to our sins as you hold on to your children’s sins against you, none of us will have a glimpse of salvation? We don’t have to commit a crime to experience the isolation in the cell of the prison, the moment that we cannot forgive someone, the moment that we isolate ourselves from having peace, freedom, and joy within ourselves. How does it make us feel when we have difficulty to forgive someone? On the opposite side, how do we feel when we are forgiven by anyone including our parents? How do we feel when we are not forgiven by someone? If God forgives us our sins, are we willing to forgive other’s sins against us or hurt us? Have you ever experienced forgiveness as a gift, a valuable gift? As a gift, what do you do with the gift when you receive it? As a gift, what does it make you feel when you open the gift? Have you ever received a gift of forgiveness from someone? Have you ever given a gift of forgiveness to someone? The decision is yours.