Just last year we celebrated the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis made this Year of Mercy to emphasise the immense mercy of God, the need of mercy for us and to be merciful to others too in a world that is dominated by hate and lack of forgiveness.

In the gospel for today, Peter asked the Lord how many times he should forgive his brother. At first, Peter suggested that it should be seven times. For the Jews during his time, forgiving somebody seven times was considered more than enough. It was thought that forgiveness had a limit and after that you have forgiven a specific person. For seven times one would not be obliged and blamed if you gave the “cold treatment” to this person next time. Most probably to Peter and the other disciples’ shock, Jesus answered, “Not only seven times but seventy-seven times”. In other words, there’s no limit!

To further emphasise this point of Jesus, he told a parable of a master who forgave his servant who owned him a lot of money. The debt was so big that this servant found it impossible to repay the debt and because of compassion, his debt was forgiven. On the other hand, when this same servant who was forgiven of his debt saw a fellow-servant who owed him a tiny fraction of the amount that he owed his master, he demanded that he should pay. When the fellow-servant pleaded for some more time, he threw this servant to jail. The master was horrified at this incident and after reminding this servant that he was forgiven despite of the huge amount of his debt, the servant was also jailed and was tortured until he could pay the debt.

Thanks be to God that we have a God who doesn’t have a limit on how many times he wants to forgive us of our sins. We have a God who is so understanding of our state and nature that he will continuously forgive us of our sins as long as we come to him with a sincere heart and are resolved to change our sinful ways. Just imagine if God put a limit on how many times we could be forgiven. Most probably none of us would be able to survive his justice.

For me, the most important thing about forgiveness is having the humility to ask for it. Sadly, we live in a world where the sense of sin is slowly being eroded. We live in a world where we are now coming up with so much false justification that we don’t know what’s sinful or not any more. If we don’t know what is sinful or not, then we won’t see the need to seek forgiveness.

At the same time, penitents who have sought and received God’s forgiveness experience one problem, the difficulty of forgiving one’s self. For some of us who have received the Sacrament of Reconciliation with a priest, sometimes we wonder if the love and forgiveness that we experienced inside the confessional booth is real. Sometimes, we are so overwhelmed by the experience that we sometimes we feel we don’t deserve to be forgiven. The fact is nobody deserves to be forgiven that’s why we ask it with humility.

Forgiveness is a beautiful gift from God. It enables us to be reconciled with him and live a life that God has intended. Every now and then we stumble and fall though because of our tendency to sin, forgiveness is always available and there is no limit on how many times we can acquire it. You may ask why God wants to forgive us again and again and again? It is because he never wants to lose us. He wants us to come back again to him and he is happy to receive us back.