Bishop Maximos of Melitini: Our debtstranslated

"Our Debts" Maximos Pafilis, Bishop of Melitini

Speech on the Gospel passage Matt. (18, 23-35)

There is a strange economy in human relations. We remember precisely what is owed to us and much more faintly what was given to us. A word spoken at the wrong time, a message left unanswered, the absence of someone just when we needed them, an injustice from the past that still moves around inside us like a small piece of furniture in a dark room, we stumble upon it even when we thought we had forgotten it. In today's life, in fact, the verse has become almost technically accurate. There are dates, saved conversations, photos, receipts. The memory acquired a hard drive. And so the parable of the myriad talents, with the king who decides to settle an account with his servants, comes to us more than we would like. Because Christ uses the language of debt to touch something that is difficult to measure, the way in which one person carries another within him.

The first debtor owes thousands of talents, the amount reaches the limits of the unimaginable, it almost ceases to function as a real financial quantity and becomes an image of a life...