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 sons and daughter of Israel were unable to honor the terms of the covenant that had bound them to an exclusive relationship with God. Ordinarily, their actions would have rendered God released from his obligation to the terms of the covenant. However, God chose not to do that, for he cared more about the people than the terms of the covenant. Every time the Israelites transgressed against the covenant, God forgave them and continued to hold his end of the bargain. God became known to them not only as a God who was ready to fight their wars but also as a God who always 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 had chosen to deal with them, the sons and daughters of Israel were in turn expected to do likewise, as the passage from the Book of Sirach that constitutes the First Reading makes clear. According to Sirach, this was to be non-negotiable. Anything other than forgiveness on their part would be met with God’s wrath and vengeance. Forgiveness was to be the requisite ingredient for the flourishing of the people’s relationship with God. 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 unity can be assured. 
It was perhaps with the above teaching of Sirach in mind that Peter felt obliged to ask Jesus the number of times he was expected to forgive his brother who kept wronging him. 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 good enough. Perhaps from his own experience of seeing people not willing to forgive even once, Peter must have thought that if he offered to forgive seven times he would impress Jesus. And it might be that Jesus was indeed impressed by Peter’s generosity, but he invited him to do more. Using the parable of the unforgiving servant, Jesus invited Peter and those who were listening to stop looking at forgiveness from a quantitative perspective. True forgiveness, says Jesus, must be FROM THE HEART. 
Forgiveness involves more than a mere uttering of the words, ‘I forgive you.’ He/she who utters the words, ‘I forgive you’ must truly mean those words. An example of a forgiveness that is not from the heart is the common phrase that we have all heard or even perhaps uttered ourselves, ‘ 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 of the unforgiving servant, 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.