My friends in Christ, I ended my sermon last Sunday with these words: “Stewardship demands a life of holiness, and this holiness comes from completely giving oneself to Christ, and completely accepting Him as our Saviour. Stewardship grows by our strong faith that wears the Gospel of Christ as our armor, as our clothing that wards off the Devil, and stewardship grows as through our faith in Christ as the healer of all that ails us: all that ails us personally, and all that ails us parochially, as a parish.”

Holiness undergirds all Christian stewardship. We of course speak of stewardship commonly as the giving to the Church for the glory of God our time, our talent, and our treasure – as much as we are able, in each of those three areas of time, talent, and treasure. Holiness must be what urges us to offer this to God as a holy sacrifice. Without a sense of holiness on the part of the giver, the Church is little more than one charitable organization among many. But with a sense of holiness comes the strong belief that God will use our offering of time, talent, and treasure within the holy mission of the Church, which is nothing less than the salvation of all souls, past, present and future. The poor widow who gave two mites was praised by Jesus far above the wealthy pharisees who gave abundant money because of the holiness of the poor widow: “Out of her poverty she put in all the living that she had.” God transforms even the smallest of gifts into something of infinite value.

It is through that sort of thinking that we should look at forgiveness—that God transforms what seems small into something infinitely valuable. God transforms the forgiveness we offer to those who have a debt owed to us. Now, obviously, sometimes offering forgiveness to others is difficult. If we have been hurt, if we are still bleeding, if there is still an active sense of humiliation, forgiveness can feel impossible, or even the wrong thing to do. Christ, in His infinite wisdom, understands this. Yes, He says to Saint Peter: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.” This is the scriptural way of saying that we are expected to offer forgiveness in an unlimited amount. Yet note: Christ says nothing here about when. Forgive, yes we are to do this, without condition. But when we forgive He does not legislate: often there needs to be a process of forgiveness that we initiate by the grace of God. And if you are unable to even conceive of forgiveness for a person who has deeply wronged you, tell this to God in prayer and ask for His help. And you have begun the process of forgiveness, which means a process of healing.

See here how God can take the littlest-seeming of things – a simple words offered to Him in prayer in which we confess feeling unable to forgive another person and ask for God’s help—and God in His infinite power can strengthen us and guide us towards full and unfettered forgiveness of anyone, even someone who has deeply wronged and humiliated us.

We must be clear that God expects us to forgive. He expects His local parish churches to be communities of forgiveness. Christ tells us today that if we do not forgive our brother or sister from our heart—again, which can begin in the simplest of confessions to God as I said a moment ago—if we do not forgive our brother or sister from our heart, then Christ says in no uncertain terms that God the Father will deliver us into jail until we do so. This may sound harsh, but it is no different than Jesus taught in the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” When we pray the Our Father prayer, we are agreeing to this contract: that our sins will not be forgiven until we forgive the sins of others against us. And so beginning the process of forgiveness of those we have yet to forgive could not be more important. For our salvation rides on our ability to forgive others.

Yet what Saint Paul said to the Philippians was not only accurate about them, but it is accurate about us. We are all partakers with him of grace. Grace rains down upon us. As Saint Paul wrote in Hebrews 6:7: “The earth which receives the rain that comes frequently upon it, and brings forth vegetation fit for them by whom it is cultivated, will receive blessing from God.” In the Church, grace abounds, all around us, because of Jesus Christ and His Gospel. We receive the rain of grace through the Liturgy and the Sacraments; we receive the rain of mercy and love and providence and blessing. By Christ’s grace, our lives of holiness, in which we ask God for all the help we need, can become lives of forgiveness; our parish, in asking for what we need, can more and more become a community of forgiveness—knowing and trusting with all our heart that as we forgive the sins of others, we are forgiven by Christ: even He Who lives and reigns at the Right Hand of the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

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