It is worth listening carefully to the questions that arise in the Gospels. They are rarely just trivial; they are our questions too. [In Sunday's Gospel,] it is Peter who speaks: “Lord, how often must I forgive?” He dares to suggest an answer, seven times, already generous in the language of Scripture, where the number seven points to fullness. But Jesus stretches the horizon even further: not seven, but seventy-seven times. In other words, forgiveness is not something to be counted, measured, or exhausted. And to make his point, Jesus tells a story of a servant whose debt is unimaginably large (far beyond anything he could ever repay) and yet, when he asks, it is simply cancelled. This is how God forgives: not cautiously, not reluctantly, but freely, abundantly, without calculation. Every time we enter the sacrament of Confession, we stand in that same place: bringing what we cannot repay, and receiving what we do not deserve: mercy.
But the parable does not end there. The one who has been forgiven so much refuses to forgive a small debt owed to him. And suddenly the light shifts. The story becomes sad... but it becomes a mirror. Because the mercy we receive is never meant to remain with us; it must flow through us. Confession does not only reconcile us with God... it calls us to become people of reconciliation. If we close our hearts to others, if we hold on to resentment or refuse forgiveness, we begin to block the very grace for others. Jesus is not being harsh; he is revealing a truth of the heart: that forgiven people must become forgiving people!
In The Confessional (1827) by Sir David Wilkie, we are drawn into a vivid moment of the sacramental life of the Church. A young woman kneels at the confessional, quietly speaking to the priest, while a small crowd gathers closely around, waiting their turn after what appears to have been a penitential procession. The scene is almost theatrical in its intimacy: faces lean in, bodies press forward, and , if you ask me, the figures seem remarkably close, almost a bit too close to the confessional box. This closeness is intentional however. Wilkie is less concerned with strict liturgical accuracy and more with conveying the human drama of repentance: the urgency, curiosity, even tension that surrounds the sacrament. The painting captures confession not as a distant, private ritual, but as something deeply embedded in communal life. The proximity of the onlookers heightens that sense of shared experience: sin and forgiveness are personal, yet never entirely hidden from the community.
--Father Patrick van der Vorst
Image & quotation source: https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/matthew-18-21-35-2026/
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