Posted by The WORD in other words (2009) by Fr Bernardo R. Collera SVD – Catholic Trade Manila
Thursday 19th Week in Ordinary Time
Will vinegar taste bitter when allowed to stand in its container for long? I interviewed several cooks in the seminary as well as here in Catholic Trade about this. Some said that tuba (coconut wine) vinegar made from coconut becomes even more aromatic and appetizing the longer it is kept. One of them mentioned that buli vinegar from buli or buri (nipa palm tree) plant tastes bitter, and even becomes “bitter-er” or more bitter (whichever) the longer it stays in the container. No wonder, no one sells sukang buli (nipa palm vinegar) – sukang buli never sells.
I bet unforgiveness is like sukang buli: it leaves a bitter taste in us, and the longer we can’t forgive, especially as the number of hurts increase, the more bitterness we experience within us. The stomach may start to feel the acid, and with continued unforgiveness, bitterness increases, leading to appetite loss that engenders weight and depletes energy loss, maybe ulcers, sickness, and then who knows when? – DEATH! What a way to die! In short, unforgiveness can kill, keeping us from social circulation.
Matthew’s parable of forgiveness thus becomes a warning when we live without forgiving others from our heart: we torture and trap ourselves. There are people who do not know how to apologize; hence, if all we do is wait until they do so, we may become masochistic.
Jesus thus tells us to forgive as many times as needed. We can do the following: (1) give a prescription period to others who have hurt us and may need time before they can apologize for the hurt they caused us; and/or (2) altogether cancel the bitterness by forgiving from our hearts the hurts others have given us even before they apologize. In this way, we keep bitterness away from our life, and we can continue to relate with the other as healthily as we can. Life has more than simply the hurts we take which others do to us.
Matthew’s parable is written in a section entitled “Discourse on the Church” which the whole Chapter 18 is about. He must be telling us that if we are to be a Church, Christ’s condition of forgiving others from the heart is a sine qua non in community life. Who among us in the Church does not need to be forgiven? If from the heart we forgive, I’d like to believe that the forgiver can find ways to live better than bitter.
