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Lord’s Day Reflection: ‘The Cross doesn’t keep receipts’
As the Church celebrates the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Jenny Kraska offers her thoughts on the day’s liturgical readings, reflecting on the theme, “The Cross doesn’t keep receipts.”
By Jenny Kraska
Peter’s question is one of the most human questions in all of Scripture: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” (Mt 18:21).
Peter probably thought he was being generous. Yet Jesus’ answer must have left him speechless: “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”
The parable that follows is striking. A servant owes his king an unimaginable debt – so large that he could never hope to repay it. Moved with compassion, the king forgives the entire amount.
Yet that same servant immediately seeks out a fellow servant who owes him a comparatively tiny sum. Grabbing him by the throat, he demands payment and refuses to show the mercy he himself had just received.
The lesson is clear. Every one of us stands before God as the first servant. The debt of sin we owe is beyond our ability to repay.
Yet through the Cross of Jesus Christ, God offers forgiveness freely and abundantly. The tragedy comes when we receive that mercy but refuse to extend it to others.
Forgiveness is rarely easy. Some wounds are deep. Some betrayals leave scars that last for years. Jesus does not ask us to pretend that evil never happened or that justice does not matter.
Rather, He calls us to refuse to let resentment have the final word. Forgiveness is not forgetting; it is surrendering our desire for revenge and entrusting judgment to God.
Providentially, this Gospel comes to us as the Church prepares to celebrate two closely connected feasts: the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14 and Our Lady of Sorrows on September 15. The Church places these celebrations side by side so that we may contemplate both the instrument of our salvation and the Mother who stood faithfully beneath it.
The Cross reveals the cost of God’s forgiveness, while Our Lady of Sorrows shows us what it means to remain faithful in the midst of suffering.
On Calvary, Jesus did not merely preach forgiveness; he embodied it. From the Cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them.” The forgiveness Jesus commands in Matthew’s Gospel is the very forgiveness He extends while enduring betrayal, injustice, humiliation, and death. The Cross teaches us that mercy is not cheap.
It is costly love freely given. The Church’s celebration of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross invites us not simply to admire the Cross from a distance, but to glory in the saving love revealed there.
Then, on the following day, we turn our gaze to Mary. The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows reminds us that she remained at the foot of the Cross when so many others fled. A sword pierced her heart, yet she did not yield to bitterness or despair.
Instead, she teaches us how to carry sorrow with faith and how to stand close to those who suffer. Her witness reminds us that forgiveness is often born not from forgetting pain, but from bringing that pain to God.
In a world often marked by grievance, division, and scorekeeping, the Christian is called to something different. We are called to stand beneath the Cross with Mary, remembering the immense debt God has forgiven us. There we learn that forgiveness is not weakness but strength, not surrender but freedom.
The more we receive the mercy of Christ, the more capable we become of extending that mercy to others. In the end, forgiveness does not merely free the offender – it frees the one who forgives.
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