Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent
(Daniel 3:25.34-43; Matthew 18:21-35)
Last week the governor of Texas commuted the sentence of
a man who killed his mother and brother.
The man was supposed to be executed, but with a recommendation of the
Board of Pardons and Parole and also the petition of the killer’s father, the
sentence was changed to life in prison.
Anti-death penalty supporters considered the change of sentence as a
victory for their movement. Perhaps death
penalty proponents saw it as a step backward.
It would be better to review the decision through the lens of today’s
gospel than as an ideological war.
Jesus is urging his followers to forgive those who repent
of their crimes not superficially but “from the heart.” He wants them to rejoice in the conversion of
a sin as well as to love their enemies. However,
he does not show tolerance for the person who receives forgiveness but does not
show it to others. Such people, he might
say, have to learn the hard way if they are to learn at all.
We have to take our lives seriously. They are not games which we play over and
over winning sometimes and losing other times until we die. Rather our lives are more like a long educational
process in which we will hopefully become loving people like our teacher and Lord
Jesus. If the man whose sentence was commuted has not learned to forgive
offenses against him, a long life in which he dies in bed will be no better
than a short life in which he dies at the hand of an executioner. He will never reach the goal in life which
is, again, to love like Jesus.
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