This past Sunday at Mass we read the passage from Matthew in which Peter asks Jesus if we must forgive seven times the one who has offended us (Mt 18:21-35). Studies about first Century Palestine tell us that, at that time, some teachers of the Jewish faith suggested that a good Israelite should forgive three times those who wronged him. Peter sensed that, to Jesus—who was so obviously always interested in mercy and reconciliation—the three times that were taught would seem insufficient. So he went ahead, took the floor, and suggested something that, in his view, would earn him praises from the Lord: he doubled the recommended three times and, just in case, added one more: seven. Jesus would surely answer him, «Very good, dear Peter! Yes, absolutely, it is seven times! You do understand me, my friend!»
We all know Jesus’ reply, which undoubtedly stunned good old Peter: «I don't tell you seven, but seventy times seven.»
What is the difference between the mentality expressed by Peter and that of Jesus? For the apostle, forgiveness was an act. An action. An action that could be repeated, but which, no matter how many times it was carried out, could still be counted (this is the meaning of Peter’s “seven times”). Jesus’ response indicates that for us forgiveness should not an act, but an attitude: seventy times seven (that is, always). In other words, our normal way of reacting to the offense received.
This difference is not small, because a specific action does not define us—but an attitude does. I can lie once, and that will not make me a liar. Or I may have had a good idea one day, and this will not mean that I am a genius. An attitude, on the other hand, does define what kind of person we are. Someone who wakes up every day with a new original idea in his head is a genius, and someone who lies constantly is a liar. Ultimately, what Jesus proposes is that the ability to forgive others is what defines us. That forgiveness may become, as it were, our ID, the most genuine expression of our character.
On a spiritual level there is, of course, a compelling reason for trying to make sure that we don’t see forgiveness as an act but as an attitude: for whoever does not make a habit of forgiveness will not understand God. To those who live installed in resentment and in grievance, the Merciful Father of Jesus will be nonsense, an un-believable God (in whom, literally, one cannot believe), a ridiculous being, weak and pointless. Conversely, learning to forgive is probably the one thing that can bring us to a better understanding of the loving Father announced by Jesus.
Martí Colom
The text and its difficulties
The passage from the Gospel of Luke about the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with her tears, bathing and drying them with her hair (Lk 7:36-50), is a scene of great richness and depth —besides being a very moving story— and it offers a reflection on one of the central themes of the Christian message: forgiveness.
Let’s review the development of the episode: Simon, a Pharisee, invites Jesus to his house to share a meal. As soon as Jesus reclines himself at the table, a woman known throughout the city as a sinner arrives with a bottle of perfume and, weeping, bathes Jesus’ feet with her tears and then dries them with her hair. Simon is scandalized that Jesus allows this display of affection by a woman of poor reputation. Then Jesus proposes a parable: two men owed sums of money (the first five hundred denarii, the second fifty) to a third person who, seeing their inability to pay, forgave them both. “Which of them will love him more?” asks Jesus. “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt,” answers the Pharisee.
Then Jesus directs the attention of Simon toward the woman and compares the attention she has shown him with the lack of detail that the host himself has shown him, to finally conclude with the key sentence: “Therefore I tell you, her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (7:47).
When we arrive at this central point in the story, the translation of the first half of the verse quoted above (7:47a) seems to divide Luke’s interpreters. Indeed, while some translations run along the lines we have quoted above, in many other translations the logical sequence of the narrative is broken quite surprisingly, and in them Jesus says: “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, because she loved much.”
This is, indeed, problematic. In this second type of translation Jesus is saying quite clearly that the cause of the forgiveness is her love. The problem here is that this statement confuses the message and breaks the logic of the argument presented by Luke: it is, in fact, a translation of the first half of verse 47 that does not fit at all with the rest of the passage or with the second half of the same verse: “But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (47b).
To say that the merit of the woman is to have loved, and that such love has earned her forgiveness would not reflect the parable of the two debtors, neither of whom was able to pay his debt (42). In the logic proposed by the translations cited above love is the cause of forgiveness. The problem is that Jesus is saying exactly the opposite, as is clear from the overall sense of the passage, and the parable of the two debtors illustrates this point with transparency: namely, that it is not love which causes forgiveness, but in reverse, it is forgiveness which produces love. In other words, love is the consequence of forgiveness, not the other way around. The woman, like the man who in the parable was forgiven a large debt, loves much because she has been forgiven much; she loves in response to the forgiveness received, which is exactly the point Jesus wanted to convey, to then conclude: “But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
There are at least two possible reasons that so many translators lean toward the interpretation according to which in verse 47a Jesus is saying that sins have been forgiven the woman because she loved much. The first, of a grammatical nature, is that the conjunction οτι —which is the word on which the phrase turns— is usually translated in fact as a causal “because.” In this case, however, the context indicates, as we have been suggesting, that such a translation does not fit the teaching of the passage, and that here οτι should be understood in the sense of explaining why we know that forgiveness exists, and not why there has been forgiveness.
The second reason would be the result of a misconstruction of the story. The fact that the woman enters the house crying and right away bathes the feet of Jesus with her tears before any conversation takes place between the two of them, might compel a reader to infer, indeed, that in response to the repentance shown by her tears Jesus decides to forgive her. It is not until the contentious verse 47 that Jesus says that “her sins are forgiven,” and not until the next that he directly tells her: “Your sins are forgiven.” (48) This delay in stating that forgiveness has indeed taken place seems to indicate that she, by approaching Jesus with tears and gestures of tenderness, has caused his forgiveness, and so the translation of 47a that we are questioning would, in fact, be justified.
How to reconcile the final teaching of Jesus ––“he who is forgiven little, loves little”–– which stands in perfect agreement with the parable of the two debtors, with the succession of events in the house of Simon, which could indicate that the woman loved first? We probably need to look at her tears in order to find the right answer to the question. We need to ask ourselves, what kind of tears were they? In fact, why did she cry? Why did she show so much affection for the teacher? And there is one explanation that clarifies it all: hers were tears of gratitude, not regret. The woman wept because she already knew that she had been forgiven, and it was out of gratefulness that she so lovingly approached Jesus. She went to meet him to thank him for his forgiveness, not to ask for it. There was a singular resonance between this woman and Jesus: she went to him because even before he confirmed it, she already knew that he forgave her; she went to him feeling rescued from her shame by that prophet of mercy, so different from all the other men in the city. That is why she cried, filled with gratitude; that is why she cared for him, joyfully. And Jesus understood from the outset what was happening, and when at the end of the story he told her “your sins are forgiven,” he was simply confirming what she knew beforehand. The text, moreover, with its final reference to the other guests present at the scene who watched everything carefully (49) allows us to venture the idea that the final verbalization of the forgiveness is intended to make it clear to them and Simon that Jesus did not reject the woman, even more than to tell it to her, who, indeed, would already know it. The story only seems to make full sense when we understand the woman’s tears as being born in gratefulness. We could therefore entitle this Lukan text ‘the scene of the grateful woman and the proud Pharisee’.
For if she represents those who are aware of both their sin and the forgiveness that God offers us unreservedly, Simon describes those who, believing themselves guiltless, move away from God because deep down they think that they do not need anything from anyone, not even from the Father. The final phrase with which Jesus closes his lesson, “he who is forgiven little, loves little,” is a serious warning to the Pharisee —and to Pharisees of all time— a warning which we might read like this: “those who, believing themselves perfect, think that they do not need forgiveness, end up isolated in their pride.” This conclusion is in fact ironic, filled with the same irony that Jesus used when on another occasion he said that “those who are well have no need of a physician.” (Lk 5:31) This he said to a group of Pharisees who, just like Simon, criticized him for eating and drinking with unbelievers and whom he wanted to warn about how dangerous pride always is.
Implications of the text
What we have seen so far has important implications for how we navigate our relationships, our conflicts, and the wounds inflicted on us or by us.
In the logic of the translations that, violating the coherence of the passage, make Jesus say that the woman has been forgiven because she loved much, the responsibility for resolving the conflict rests with the sinner. He or she is the one who has to repent, change and begin to love; only then, as a result of such conversion, will they be forgiven.
On the other hand, in Jesus’ logic —the one that the more accurate translations reflect, those which are consistent with the rest of the passage, which say that she loved because much had been forgiven her— the responsibility to resolve the conflict does not lie in the sinner but in the one who is able to offer forgiveness.
As in so many other occasions, Jesus displays here a great pragmatism and an impeccable knowledge of human nature. To pretend that the sinner, without receiving any encouragement, support or inspiration, will one day, suddenly, begin to love others is highly unrealistic: it simply will not happen, at least not usually. It would be like squeezing the proverbial blood from a turnip. Instead, it is much more plausible to suggest that if someone comes forward and tells the sinner “you are forgiven,” these act may be the trigger of a real, interior transformation. Jesus, in other words, gives the responsibility to those who can exercise it. The debtors of the parable, let us remember again, could not pay. That is, they simply could not take the initiative.
Is it realistic to think that someone immersed in selfishness may discover the path of generosity magically, with no mediations? Probably not. Is it reasonable to think that, if he gets the assurance, the certainty, that his meanness will not be taken into account, that something deep inside of him may change forever? Possibly. That is, for example, the intuition in which is based the famous beginning of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, when Jean Valjean is generously forgiven (having done absolutely nothing to merit such grace) by the bishop from whom he had stolen.
The logic that emerges from the statement “therefore I tell you, her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven,” explains God’s relationship with us: the Father is not up in heaven, waiting impatiently, haughtily, like an offended child, for us to go to him and apologize. Instead, God takes the initiative, comes forward to us and freely offers us His forgiveness and love, hoping that our answer will be our love. “God loved us first”, as we read in the First Letter of John. (1 Jn 4:19)
This same logic is, of course, the one which, according to Jesus, should guide our interpersonal relationships and help solve our conflicts. Without ivory towers, with no expectations that the other person has to be the one taking the first step and crawling up to us, begging for forgiveness, so that we may, finally, grant it. “If you go to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother,” says Matthew. (5:23-24) It does not matter if the brother is right or not! The priority is to have reconciliation, and the person of faith —the one who goes to the altar— must take the initiative.
All this is very good news, when applied to our relationship with God. It is also a challenging message, when applied to our relationship with one another.
