Reflection on the Gospel – Monday, June 16, 2025

I think the best way to reflect on this Gospel is to use the language young people use today: “That’s intense!”
And it’s true. What Jesus says is intense—He talks about forgiveness in a very radical way. Unconditional forgiveness as something essential for His followers. And it’s intense because that’s not how our world works. Let’s be honest about it.

These radical words of Jesus—so different from what we usually see and feel—reminded me of something I read recently in a novel. It was The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Almost at the very end of the book, one of the characters, trying to justify all the killings in the story, says very clearly:

“In our world, there’s no room for forgiveness.”
Simple and honest.

We might think that only happens in the world of crime and the mafia. But that’s not true. It’s actually hard to find real forgiveness in our society—especially between groups of people.

There are many examples, but just think about Israelis and Palestinians. They’ve been in conflict for over seventy years, living by the rule “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” But if we keep going like that, we’ll all end up blind and toothless.

Or think of that painting by Goya, where two men are fighting with sticks, buried up to their knees in a dry, empty land. It’s a clear image of conflict, hate, and violence—something that sadly fills many of our relationships.

But that path—the path of revenge—leads nowhere.
Only forgiveness opens the way to a new future. Forgiveness and forgetting, too. Because forgiving means giving the other person a chance to start over, to admit their mistake (and really, who hasn’t made mistakes? Who hasn’t needed forgiveness?) and to be given a second chance.

And it’s really not about doing anything more than what God already does for us:
being close, forgiving us, and always letting us start over again—as if nothing had ever happened.