March 10, 2026
III Tuesday of Lent
Fr. Gianfranco Pinto Ostuni
May the Lord give you peace.
I am Fr. Gianfranco Pinto Ostuni, a Friar Minor of the Custody of the Holy Land, General Commissario for southern Italy, and I speak to you from Naples.
In the passage from Matthew we have just heard, Peter approaches Jesus and asks a question that arises from the concrete experience of relationships: "Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother if he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
The question is realistic. If I am in the right and suffer a wrong, human logic demands that "justice be done": that what has been taken from me be restored, that the damage caused be repaired. The goal is the restoration of balance, a kind of settling of accounts. This appears to be the ordinary foundation of relationships between upright people.
Within a deeper relationship, between brothers, between fellow believers, between people bound by a bond, the possibility of forgiveness enters the picture. Forgiveness is the intentional choice to free oneself from resentment and hatred toward the one who caused a wound, it is accepting what happened without allowing it to dominate the present.
But an objection emerges: what happens when the wrong is repeated? When the brother continues to "sin against me"? Until when must I forgive?
Peter proposes a generous measure, seven times, but he receives from Jesus an answer that breaks every calculation: "I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven". The relationship is no longer founded simply between two people, it is determined by a Presence that redefines everything. The measure is no longer human balance, but the experience of having encountered a Presence who has forgiven and loved me beyond my merits.
The decisive question then becomes: by whom have you been forgiven? Who determines your life beyond your capacity to "settle accounts"?
The parable of the servant whose immense debt is forgiven clarifies this powerfully. Ten thousand talents represent a disproportionate, unpayable sum, we might say in modern language, hundreds of millions. The king, moved with compassion, does not simply grant a delay, he cancels everything. It is an act of pure mercy, exceeding every justice.
And yet that servant, as soon as he goes out, does not allow the mercy he received to transform his heart. He meets a companion who owes him a trivial sum by comparison and he seizes him by the throat, demanding immediate payment. Paradoxically, the experience of the gift does not make him more merciful, but harsher. It is as if he had interpreted the cancellation as personal good fortune, a winning, not as a renewed belonging to the heart of the king.
The king's indignation is therefore inevitable. The one who had been called "servant" is now defined as "wicked". His fault is not having had a debt, but having refused to let himself be transformed by the forgiveness received.
Jesus concludes with severe words: "So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart". What does it mean to forgive "from the heart"?
It means not limiting oneself to a formal or exterior act, but judging the other starting from the deepest desire that dwells within ourselves, the desire to be loved, understood, forgiven. To forgive from the heart is to look at the other not only for his error, but for his deepest truth as a son, a brother, a man loved by God.
This is what Francis of Assisi suggested in a famous letter to a minister, probably a superior who complained about difficult brothers. He wrote: "And in this I want to know whether you love the Lord and love me, His servant and yours: that there be no brother in the world who has sinned, as much as it is possible to sin, who, after seeing your eyes, does not go away without your forgiveness, if he asks for it, and if he does not ask for forgiveness, ask him whether he wishes to be forgiven. And if afterwards he should sin a thousand times before your eyes, love him more than me for this, so that you may draw him to the Lord, and always have mercy on such brothers".
Here forgiveness is not weakness, but participation in the very gaze of God. It is not passive tolerance of evil, but the active decision to love in order to save.
The parable leads us to a decisive truth: the Christian does not forgive because the other deserves it, but because he himself lives by an undeserved forgiveness. The foundation of forgiveness is not fairness, but gratitude. And perhaps the decisive question, in the end, is not: "How many times must I forgive?", but: "Have I truly become aware of how much I have been forgiven?"
From this awareness arises the freedom to forgive without measure.
A blessed Lent to everyone.
Every time we refuse to forgive, we behave like the servant who forgets the debt that was cancelled. Every time we forgive, we enter the logic of the Father, allowing the mercy received to become mercy given.
To forgive "seventy times seven" does not mean denying pain or injustice, it means choosing not to allow evil to have the last word. It means breaking the chain of revenge and opening a new space where the other can begin again.
Forgiveness from the heart is the concrete form through which the Gospel takes flesh in daily relationships. It is the sign that we have understood who our King is and how immense is the debt that has been forgiven us.
