September 13, 2026
Revised Common Lectionary
Exodus 14:19-31 or Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21 or Genesis 50:15-21
Psalm 114 or Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35
Lectionary for Mass (RC)
Sirach 27:30 – 28:7
Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12 (8)
Romans 14:7-9
Matthew 18:21-35
Yolanda Tinajero’s life was upended on August 3, 2019, when a white supremacist walked into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and opened fire. Twenty-three people, including Tinajero’s brother, Arturo Benavides, a decorated Army veteran, were murdered in an act of racial violence targeting the city’s Hispanic community.
Nearly six years later, at the gunman’s sentencing hearing in April 2025, when families of the victims were invited to give testimony, Tinajero addressed her brother’s killer directly: “In my heart, I want to hug you very tight so you could feel my forgiveness, especially my loss. But I know it’s not allowed. I want you to see and feel all of us who have been impacted by your actions that have brought us all closer with God’s love, which shows you that this great city of El Paso is a very forgiving place.”
The judge asked if she really wanted to hug him. She did — wrapping her arms around her brother’s killer for nearly a minute. “I felt peace,” she said. “I felt like I wanted him to feel what I was feeling. I wanted to do with my embrace for him to feel healing, as well as myself.”
Yolanda Tinajero’s words and actions contrast starkly with the cries for vengeance and the continuing cycles of retribution we hear about in the news every day. They also challenge us to consider how we respond to hurt in our daily lives. Forgiveness is hard even in situations where the stakes are far lower.
Forgiveness can also be difficult when we experience repeated offensive behavior from the same person. How long do we have to put up with that? In today’s Gospel story, Peter speaks from what he considers a position of compassion when posing this question to Jesus. Relying on the significance of the number seven, which suggests perfection, Peter asks: Should I forgive seven times? We can almost see the smug expression on his face as he displays his generosity of spirit.
Sorry, says Jesus, not good enough. You must forgive even beyond perfection, seventy-seven times. And then Jesus seizes the opportunity to offer a parable and in doing so to raise the question that Peter did not ask: Why forgive?
The story that Jesus tells makes its point by its extensive use of hyperbole. The servant owes his master an astronomical sum of money—far more than one could earn in a lifetime. The master’s judgment is overly severe, since selling people to satisfy a debt was forbidden in Jewish law and rarely enforced in Roman law. The master’s turnabout is nothing short of shocking. Just one plea from the servant moves him from the most punitive position to the most generous—a complete and unconditional forgiveness of the entire debt.
Hyperbole continues as the story unfolds. The second servant’s debt is miniscule—nearly negligible—but the first servant’s reaction is completely out of proportion. He grabs him, chokes him, and sends him off to prison despite the plea for additional time to repay. After the intervention of other servants who witnessed this awful treatment, the master revokes his forgiveness of the first servant’s debt and reimposes the original and very severe penalty.
Despite its dark ending, this is a story of generosity and forgiveness. God, who surely has both power and cause to exact a price for human sin, is rich in mercy, offering forgiveness fully and unconditionally, no matter how large or serious the debt. As we hear this story, each of us can see ourselves as that first servant—beneficiaries of undeserved mercy who struggle to show the same compassion to others when we are wounded.
Why forgive? Because God has forgiven us and has now given us the mission to extend that same gift to others. Seven times is not enough, says Jesus, because we are to be like God, whose generous, full, and unconditional forgiveness far exceeds any reasonable expectation.
Like the servant who was forgiven a huge sum, we may resist the imperative to pay it forward. Jesus is not suggesting, of course, that we should subject ourselves to abusive treatment, but he is making a clear connection between God’s mercy and the mercy that we are to show others even when the offense is personal and hurtful. The teaching of Jesus and the example of Yolanda Tinajero remind us that to forgive is not to deny wrongdoing, but rather to proclaim that love is always stronger than evil.
Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, during his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Mt 6:12). As we sing or recite the Lord’s Prayer, we are committing ourselves both personally and communally to living out this teaching of Jesus, that we must extend to others the forgiveness we have received in abundance.
The question is not how many times to forgive—seven or seventy-seven—but how to forgive others as God does, from the heart (Mt 18:35).
A Hymn for Today: “God, how can we forgive”
Forgiving a deep hurt can be extremely difficult. Hymnwriter Ruth Duck, FHS, expresses the Christian struggle to forgive while recognizing the depth of forgiveness that we receive from God. Listen here.
God, how can we forgive
when bonds of love are torn?
How can we rise and start anew,
our trust reborn?
When human loving fails
and every hope is gone,
your love gives strength beyond our own,
to face the dawn.
When we have missed the mark,
and tears of anguish flow,
how can you still release our guilt,
the debt we owe?
The ocean depth of grace
surpasses all our needs.
A priest who shares our human pain,
Christ intercedes.
Who dares to throw the stone
to damn another’s sin,
when you, while knowing all our past,
forgive again?
No more we play the judge,
for by your grace we live.
As you, O God, forgive our sin,
may we forgive.
Text: Ruth Duck, b. 1947. © 1996, The Pilgrim Press. Used by permission under OneLicense #A-729857
Tune: LEONI
Image Credit: Forgiveness, Wikimedia Commons
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