In the same manner will my heavenly Father act towards you unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart. Forgiveness is a virtue that anyone who carries him/herself as a child of God is expected to espouse. This is because forgiveness is among the distinguishing traits of the Judeo-Christian God. In the entire history of God journeying with the Israelites, forgiveness is perhaps the noblest characteristic of God that ensured that the covenant God had made with the people of Israel was kept alive. For time and again, the Israelites were unable to honor the terms of the covenant. Accordingly, their actions rendered God released from his obligation to the covenant. However, God chose not to follow the dictates of the terms of the covenant, for he cared more about the people than the terms of the covenant. Each time the Israelites transgressed against the covenant, God forgave them and continued to hold his end of the bargain. God became known not only as a God who fought their fights but also as a God who forgave them their sins. This is attested to by the numerous Scripture passages that celebrate this wonderful quality of God (cf. Isaiah 1:18, 43:25-26, 55:7c; Jeremiah 31:34c; Micah 7:18-19; Psalm 103:12, 130:3; Daniel 9:9). Because of the way God chose to deal with them, the people were in turn expected to do likewise, as the First Reading from the Book of Sirach makes clear. Anything other than forgiveness would be met with God’s wrath and vengeance. Forgiveness of other people’s faults ensured the forgiveness of personal sins by God. Moreover, it is when members of a community practice forgiveness that healing can occur. Perhaps it was with such teachings as from the Book of Sirach in mind that Peter felt obliged to ask Jesus the number of times an individual was expected to forgive his/her fellow who kept wronging him/her. Having listened to Jesus teach about forgiveness and witnessed how Jesus dealt with those who always got into conflict with him, Peter wondered whether seven times was enough. Jesus commends Peter for his generosity, but tells him that forgiveness is not only about unlimited number of times. True forgiveness must be FROM THE HEART. Forgiveness involves more than uttering the words, ‘I forgive you.’ One must truly mean those words. An example of a forgiveness that is not from the heart is the common phrase, ‘I forgive you but I will not forget.’ An individual who keeps reminding his/her transgressor that ‘this is the twentieth time that you have done this but I forgive you’ hasn’t truly forgiven from the heart. To forgive from the heart, each transgression must be dealt with as if it is the first one ever committed. To forgive completely and from the heart, an individual takes into account the welfare of the transgressor. One should not forgive simply because he/she wants to feel great (feeling morally/psychologically superior to the one forgiven). In the parable, the king initially forgave the servant because he had COMPASSION on him. The king, as it were, put himself in the shoes of the servant and was led to forgive him. The king’s forgiveness of the servant was completely from the heart because he erased the debt. A Christian forgives because God has forgiven him/her. It is the experience of being forgiven by God that a Christian extends to the one who wrong’s him/her. If God has forgiven us completely and from the heart, we have no option but to do likewise. If God forgives us each time we run to him without reminding us of our past, we have no excuse but to do likewise. For it is only when we forgive those who wrong us that our forgiveness by God becomes complete.