Today we remember St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan Conventual whose death occurred at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland in 1941, after volunteering to replace Franciszek Gajowniczek, a father and husband who had been chosen for execution by starvation. Kolbe courageously responded to Gajowniczek’s cry, “My wife, my children.” At Kolbe’s beatification, Pope John Paul II entitled him “martyr of charity,” deeming his “a heroic love,” corresponding to Jesus’ words: “Greater love than this no one has” (John 15:13).
In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ response to Simon Peter about the number of times we must forgive may also take us into the territory of “heroic love.” Seventy seven times! Not many of us are likely to be called upon to express the heroic love of martyrdom, but the request to forgive is another matter. How costly forgiveness can be to those who have been hurt, bearing deep wounds of betrayal, anger, a desire for revenge, even hatred. How are these to be replaced by forgiveness? Today’s parable is cast in economic terms, but it captures the tension between Jesus’ teaching that we must forgive again and again and the struggle of the characters to forgive at all, or only for the moment.
Moving to the love of forgiveness can seem an impossibility. And it may well be, unless we have help from the Holy Spirit in transforming our hearts. The movement from intense grief to forgiveness is the work of the powerful presence of God within us. “Come, Holy Spirit; fill my heart with the f ire of your love, the love of forgiveness.” God does not abandon us. And Jesus will accompany us, leading us from the prison of pain into the healing light of peace.
