STM Homily | Fr. Joseph MacNeill | September 13, 2026

How does the world out there know that I am a Christian? How do I distinguish myself in the world as a disciple of Christ? If someone were to look at me, how would they know I'm a Christian? It's a good question, isn't it? question I think that we should reflect on, perhaps every day of our lives. It's a question, certainly, that will be, in some sense, asked of us on the last day as we make our final accounting to the Lord.

How has the world seen me as a Christian? In what way? If you remember, I asked this question of all of us about a year ago in a different homily, and I asked it again today because I think today's liturgy shed some new light on this question. We could answer that question in many ways.

The scriptures give us many ways of answering that question, certainly. Christ, in his Last Supper Discourse, if you remember, in the course of his high priestly prayer, he suggests unity, union of the disciples as a sign and symbol to the world of Christians. In other words, the church should be so united, one to the other, each one of us united together, that the world recognizes us as Christians. That's one answer to that question.

Christ elsewhere in the gospel gives another answer. He says the Christian disciple should be distinguished by the way in which he or she lays down his or her life for another. So in other words, love, Self-sacrifice should distinguish us in the world so that someone can look at us without even knowing who we are, or what we stand for. And recognize there's something distinctive. that person must be a disciple of Christ.

In fact, in the early church, this was actually the case. In the second century, if you've ever read the letter to Diognetus, If you haven't read it, it's a great little letter. It's a short read. You can read it today during the rainstorm. The letter to Diagnetus says in the second century that people recognized Christians in many ways because of the way in which they loved. They self-sacrificed for the other.

So how does the world out there know that I'm a Christian? By the unity of us as disciples, by love, by self-sacrifice. There are many ways we could answer that question. But today, our readings give us another answer. They tell us that the Christian disciple should be recognized in the world for the way in which he or she practices forgiveness.

Forgiveness, like unity, like love, like self-sacrifice, is, we're told today, a hallmark of Christian discipleship. It's not an option. It's not a mere possibility. it's a challenge, it's an obligation for us as Christian disciples. Jesus tells us in the gospel today why it is that forgiveness must distinguish everything that we do.

The protagonist of today's gospel is Peter, as we've seen in the past few weeks. You know, Peter has just been named kind of the head of the apostles and the early church, and he's still trying to kind of figure out just what discipleship is going to entail for him. And so we ask this question, basically, how many times do I have to forgive my brother or my sister? And Jesus responds in a very Jesus-like fashion by saying Not seven times, but 77 times. He takes the perfect number, seven. You know, think about how the world was created in seven days, a seven day week. It's this number of perfection, and he basically takes two perfect numbers and puts them together 77 times. In other words. in Jesus-speak, this means basically infinity. As many times as a brother or sister needs forgiveness, we are to offer that mercy and that forgiveness.

But then Jesus launches into this parable, which explains why it is that we are to, as disciples of Christ, having a little alert here, give it a second to... Forgiveness, I forgive everyone for this outburst. Okay. I forgive you all. See, it's a hallmark of my life as a Christian disciple. I forgive all of you, okay, that transgression.

Okay, so Jesus tells Peter and all of us that we are to forgive as many times as that is required of us. So infinity times we're called to forgive. And then he launches into this parable to explain why it is that we are called to forgive every time. Why is this a hallmark of Christian discipleship? So in this parable, we have the story of this king who's approached by one of his servants, a servant who was in charge of some of his estate, some of his resources, and the servant, we're told, owes to the king a huge amount.

Now, in English, we're told it's a huge amount. What is it in the Greek, if you go back to the original text? We're told that this servant owed the master 10,000 talents.

Now, what is a talent in the ancient world? It's a unit of measurement of precious metal. Think about like great big ingots of gold or silver. At this time, scholars tell us a talent of precious metal would have weighed about 50 or 75 pounds. One talent, 50 to 75 pounds of some kind of precious metal. Now think about 10,000 ingots of precious metal.

Scholars also tell us if we were to average out kind of what an average talent would be worth in terms of basically wages, daily wages. We're told one talent, 50 to 75 pounds of precious metal, would have been worth 20 years worth of daily wages of a laborer at the time. One talent. 20 years worth of daily wages. This man owes 10,000 talents.

So a huge amount. That's kind of really selling it short. he owes basically 200,000 years worth of daily wages to the king an impossible sum to pay back and think about what kind of debauchery and chicanery that man must have been involved in to get that kind of debt 200,000 Years worth of daily wages he owed to the master, so what happens? The master basically tells him, Okay, because of this, you're going to suffer the consequences of your actions. you and your family are basically going to fall into perdition. But the servant falls down before him and asks for patience, leniency. Notice the servant doesn't even ask necessarily for complete and total forgiveness of the debt. He says, be patient with me and I will pay you back in full. In other words, he's like, give me some respite. I can pay it back, which is impossible. It's impossible ever to pay back that sum, even in many, many lifetimes.

what does the master, the king, do in response? He doesn't simply accede to the request and say, okay, I'll give you some time to kind of work out that sum, pay it back to me. No, he forgives wholly and completely this impossibly exorbitant debt that the servant owes to him. Complete and total forgiveness, simply because this man has come before the master and asked for forgiveness.

Now what happens next, as the servant goes off, and as those words of forgiveness are still ringing in his ear, as he's leaving the master's presence, he falls upon one of his brothers, who owes him, as we're told again in English today, a much smaller amount. What is it in Greek? A hundred denarii. A denarius, we're told, sort of in comparison to our own day, one denarius is worth one day's worth of wages.

So think of the comparison. This guy owed 200,000 years worth of wages to his master and was forgiven. He owes to another person 100 days worth of wages. and does he look upon this other person with clemency or leniency as the master had to him? No. Right away, before really this man even speaks, what does he do? He seizes him. He starts to choke him and demands he pays back this much, much, much, much, much smaller amount. He has been shown great mercy and clemency, and he refuses to show that to someone else.

And so what happens as a result, the master says, you will now be, you wicked servant, consigned into prison to pay back the whole debt, which basically means you will be lost for eternity, paying back a debt that's impossible to repay. Such will happen to us, Jesus says to us, these harrowing lines at the end, so will my heavenly father do to you unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.

In some sense, we are all like this first servant. By our sins, we have run up a debt that we cannot repay. But the Lord, in his great mercy, like this king, simply because we come before him and say, Lord, I'm sorry, I want to do better. The Lord forgives wholly and completely that debt of sin, washes sins away through baptism, which we'll celebrate after Mass today, through confession, through the sacraments of the church.

Jesus, the Lord, forgives us a debt that we can never possibly pay back. And then sometimes it's that forgiveness, The words of that forgiveness that we hear at mass after confession, the words as they ring in our ears. Sometimes we're like, this servant, and we run out with those words still in our hearts and our minds. And we refuse to show mercy and clemency to others.

Remember what we pray every time we say the our Father, I've said this here before. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Jesus makes in a certain and sense our forgiveness by Him conditional upon our willingness to show mercy and clemency to others. 

Forgiveness is a hallmark of our life as Christian disciples, and here's why. Because the Lord has forgiven us and will continue to forgive us every time we're in need. So too we are called to be merciful, to show that clemency and that leniency towards others.

As I mentioned, this is the hallmark of all the disciples of the Lord. Search the scriptures and find all these wonderful stories of mercy shown by those who follow the Lord. You know, think back to the book of Genesis, the story we all know of Joseph, the son of Jacob, who's sold into slavery in Egypt for 20 pieces of silver by his 10 older brothers. We know the story.

And then what happens, those older brothers, they fall into famine in their homeland. They make their way to Egypt, where now Joseph has become the grand vizier and assistant to the pharaoh, and they show remorse for their sins. And Joseph, instead of responding in kind, what does he do? He forgives them and offers them some of the stores of food in his kingdom. He says, what you human beings worked for evil the Lord has brought about and worked for good. Joseph forgives.

Think about the story of King David and the books of Samuel. You know the story of David, who is anointed king as a young man by Samuel? While Saul, the evil, wicked King, is still on the throne, and Saul does everything he can to persecute and to try to kill David. He's chasing him all around to try to put him to death. What happens, we know the story. Saul enters into the cave of En Gedi, where he doesn't even know that David is hiding.

Saul has his back to David, and David could do whatever he wants to this wicked and unjust usurper of the throne. He could slay him right there, and what does he do? He has clemency, leniency, even on his enemy, even on a man who hasn't really even shown contrition or repentance. He shows mercy and leniency, and because of that, what happens after Saul in tears, weeping, proclaims that David really indeed should be king.

Think about the story of Stephen, the first deacon in the Acts of the Apostles, this young man who's chosen by the early church to serve as a deacon at the altar, one of the first deacons. He's put to death because of his faith in Christ. He's stoned to death, and as he's being stoned, he echoes the words of Jesus at his crucifixion. He says, Lord, do not hold their sin against them. He shows clemency and leniency even at the point of death.

We could even look at examples in our own day or close to our own day. I wasn't alive in 1981. Many of us weren't alive in 1981, okay? But think back to the days of 1981, March 30th, 1981. President Reagan, remember the assassination attempt against him? As he was recovering in the hospital bed as all the lights are shining upon him, he wrote in in his White House diary, that he was praying to the Lord for healing, recovery. And he realized, he said to himself, I can't really make this prayer for recovery while I still harbor such hatred for the deranged man that shot me.

And so in that moment, he realized, I'm called to pray for this lost sheep, in his words, that he, as he said, would return to the fold. Even in that moment of great difficulty, he prays for his enemy, for the one who has wronged him. In that same year, 1981, big year, what else happened? Pope John Paul II, on May 13th of 1981, was shot twice in St. Peter's Square. And we all know the story about how two years later, what did he do?

He went to find his would-be assassin in a Roman prison, sat with him and spoke with him for 21 minutes. and offered that man leniency, clemency, contrition.

This is what it looks like, friends, in all of these episodes, to be a disciple of our Lord, the Lord who forgives us, that we may go forth and forgive others. So to return to that question from the beginning, how do people out there know that I'm a Christian disciple? Yeah, maybe because I'm wearing a cross, maybe because I'm coming from Mass, but really, truly, Do others out there recognize me as a disciple of Christ? Because of my willingness to show mercy and leniency against those who have wronged me, as in all these examples, by my ability to not hold the evils that someone has committed against him, but to show clemency, even in moments of great trial, we pray that all of us here, as disciples of the Lord Jesus. followers of Christ, this day and every day may be known for just such a spirit of forgiveness. Amen.