Aug 13 – Memorial for St. Pontian, pope, martyr, and St. Hippolytus, priest, martyr
Pontian was among the first victims of an anti-Christian new emperor. Rounded up with the antipope Hippolytus, Pontian was deported to the labour mines. While imprisoned, Hippolytus reconciled his differences with Pontian and even ordered his followers to bring themselves back to the Church. Before he succumbed to the harsh treatment of the mines, Hippolytus became a true confessor of Christ. Pontian, in the mines only two months, was brutally beaten to death by his jailers.
- Patron Saint Index
Eze 12:1-12
Mt 18:21–19:1
“Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?” Jesus answered, “Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.”
Today, my son L, turns four.
He is, like most four-year-olds, a study in contradictions. Quick-tempered — a toy taken, a plan changed, and the storm rolls in fast. But just as quickly, the storm passes. He doesn’t hold grudges. He doesn’t keep score. Five minutes after tears, he’s laughing again, arms open, as if the offense never existed.
And every day, without fail, he waits for me. When I come home, he runs to the door, wraps his arms around me, and tells me he loves me. He doesn’t check first whether I was patient enough that week, present enough, good enough. He just loves.
I’ll be honest: I often feel undeserving of it. I know my shortcomings as a father better than anyone. And yet there he is at the door, every single day, giving me what I haven’t earned.
I think this is why Jesus, just a few verses before today’s reading, placed a child in the middle of his disciples and said, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Peter, it seems, hadn’t quite absorbed the lesson. He comes to Jesus doing math: How many times must I forgive? Seven? Peter thought he was being generous — the rabbis of his day suggested three. But he was still counting. Still keeping a ledger.
Jesus’ answer — seventy-seven times — isn’t a bigger number to track. It’s the end of tracking altogether. It’s forgiveness the way a four-year-old forgives — completely, quickly, without arithmetic.
Then Jesus tells the parable that unmasks us all. A servant owes his king ten thousand talents — a debt so absurd it could never be repaid in a hundred lifetimes. The king forgives it entirely. And that same servant walks out and chokes a fellow servant over pocket change.
The parable stings because we know which servant we are. We have been forgiven an unpayable debt — and still we find ourselves gripping tightly to the small debts others owe us. The slight from a coworker. The sharp word from a spouse. The old wound we rehearse.
Some people tell me I spoil him. That I’m not strict enough. But loving L like this doesn’t mean that anything goes. In our home there are lines that do not move — we don’t tolerate unkindness or disrespect, and when we pray, we pray with reverence. L pushes boundaries — he’s four — but he’s learning that mercy and firmness aren’t enemies. Neither are they in the parable. The same king who cancels an unpayable debt still expects that mercy to change how his servant lives. Grace is free, but it isn’t shapeless. It forgives everything, and it asks for everything. The safest place for a quick-tempered little boy — for any of us — is inside a love that will not let go and will not look away.
But here is what L teaches me, standing at the door with his arms out — love that comes before deserving is not a fantasy. It’s how God loves. I did nothing today to earn my son’s embrace, and I have done nothing to earn my Father’s mercy. Both simply wait for me to come home.
Maybe that’s the real question hiding inside Peter’s question. Not how many times must I forgive — but do I understand how many times I have been forgiven? The one who truly grasps the size of the debt cancelled for him finds the smaller debts loosening from his grip.
Four years ago today, God gave me a teacher. He is small and loud, and quick to anger, and quicker still to love. He forgives like someone who has never learned there’s another way.
Lord, let me never learn another way either.
(Today’s OXYGEN by Gerard Francis)
Prayer: Father, You forgave me a debt I could never repay, and still You wait for me at the door. Teach me to forgive as freely as I have been forgiven — without counting, without conditions, without delay. Help me raise my son the way You raise me: firm in what matters, endless in mercy.
Thanksgiving: Thank You for the children who show us Your heart. Bless L on his birthday, and make me worthy of the love he gives so freely.
OXYGEN 
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