How Many Times Must We Forgive?

This week's episode marks a return to podcasting from Father Ryan's new home in Washington, D.C., where he's now in his first year of graduate studies in Canon Law at Catholic University. Drawing on Sirach, Romans 14, and Matthew 18, he unpacks Jesus's answer to Peter's question about forgiveness, seventy-seven times, not seven, and traces the word "forgive" back to its roots: a surrendering of the desire for power and revenge, not a denial that we were ever hurt. Forgiveness, he argues, is above all an interior work, one we can offer even to those who never know we've extended it. With the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross falling this week, he closes by pointing to the crucifix as the clearest image of the compassion with which we ourselves have already been forgiven.