Carmelite homily for Tuesday, March 17, 2020 – Lectionary 238 (Matthew 18:21-35)
I’m sure she said this ‘tongue in cheek’ but it’s a good quotation from Saint Therese. She says, “There is one science God does not know – arithmetic. Our sins only serve to glorify the mercy of God.” That’s exactly what’s going on in today’s Gospel. A man comes in to the steward owing a large amount and the steward doesn’t know arithmetic and forgives it all. And then the man runs into someone who owes him a small amount but demands arithmetic, ‘you owe me this money!’ If God does not know arithmetic, Jesus is saying, then we shouldn’t know arithmetic. We shouldn’t demand revenge, or an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth. As Saint Paul says, “Love keeps no record of a wrong.” That’s the call of today’s Gospel: to know no arithmetic.
