NOTES for Luk 17:3-4
How many times should one forgive a person who has done you evil? To what limits should mercy and forgiveness extend? In other words, what measure of forgiveness will be enough? For people brought up in the law, this question looks natural, and so the disciples ask it of Christ. Matthew the evangelist, in chapter 18, reports a similar question from Peter; Luke the evangelist, in today's reading, also transmits Christ's words about sevenfold forgiveness, without mentioning the question. To understand what the Lord says, it is important to keep in mind that "seven" is a number symbolizing every fullness, and this was well known to Christ's disciples.
In essence, the Lord rejects the Jewish idea of a "measure" of forgiveness. Forgiveness, mercy, and compassion toward people, including those who do us evil, can never be enough. We have no possibility of ceasing to forgive on the grounds that we have already done it a certain number of times. This is what today's words of Christ mean: "If he sins against you seven times in a day... and seven times turns back... forgive him." This is what the words transmitted by Matthew mean: "not... up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." This is what the commandment to love one's enemies means. Relations between people are not built on weighing debts and acts of forgiveness. The Gospel as a whole considers forgiving people our duty, but not before people; before God. That is the whole point.
The Lord speaks about this many times. The clearest illustration may be His parable of the unforgiving creditor, which He told in answer to Peter's question about how many times to forgive. In practice this is very important, because fulfilling Christ's words about repeated, constant forgiveness is hard. Moreover, as the Lord Himself puts it, "with people this is impossible." But if we forgive not by our human strength, not because we must fulfill the commandment with clenched teeth, but for the sake of faithfulness to God, regardless of those whom we forgive, this becomes for us an encounter with God Himself.
Luke the evangelist transmits an important word of Christ about this, though one very difficult to translate. Before the commandment to forgive always and repeatedly, the Lord says to the disciples, "Pay attention to yourselves" (as in the Synodal translation). The Slavonic text offers the variant "Attend to yourselves," and the Vulgate renders this expression with the words "adtendite vobis." The Greek prosehete heautois includes two main shades of meaning. The expression mainly means "watch yourselves, pay attention to yourselves." It is a call to reflection, to the analysis of one's actions, decisions, and experiences. The Lord calls the disciples to look into themselves so that forgiveness will be for them not a weighed payment for people's deeds, but an encounter with God acting in their life.
But the Greek expression cited by the evangelist also has another shade of meaning, one not missed by blessed Jerome and visible in translations that follow the Vulgate. This shade can be conveyed by words such as "Hold fast, make an effort, gather yourselves." "Brace yourselves" - that is what is very important. The forgiveness of which the Lord speaks is not a "state of soul" in which forgiveness happens "by itself." It is labor, requiring collectedness and effort. When Christians say that the Church is the army of Christ, forgiveness is precisely the front line of the battle in which this army is called to take part. And it is important for us to watch ourselves and remember that forgiveness is not a payment we bring to people and not a sacrifice to God; it is a miracle that God works in us.