The Debt That Teaches Us to Love

Think of the last time someone forgave you something major.

Not a forgotten text message, but a true debt: money you could not repay, a careless word that wounded more deeply than you'd intended, a major failure at work, years of addiction and everything that came with it.

Now compare that to the small courtesies people extend every day, the “no worries” when you are two minutes late.

Which forgiveness do you still remember? Which one changed how you felt about the person who gave it?

We instinctively know the answer. The greater the mercy. The more grateful we are.

Jesus knew this too, and He made it clear that the same rule applies to our love for God. He taught this in the house of a Pharisee named Simon.

 

Mercy at the Table

A woman known in the town as a sinner came into Simon’s house uninvited, wept at the feet of Jesus, kissed them, and anointed them with ointment. Simon was scandalized. Jesus answered him with a story about two debtors, one owing a vast sum and one owing little, both forgiven by the same creditor. Then He asked the question that could totally revolutionize your spiritual life: "Now which of them will love him more?" (Luke 7:42).

Simon gave the obvious answer, but Jesus took that obvious answer all the way home: "Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little" (Luke 7:47).

The woman does not earn forgiveness by her love. Her love is the overflow of forgiveness already received. And notice what is left unsaid about Simon. He was not a worse sinner than the woman; he wasn't even aware he was a sinner at all. If he was, it was all minor faults. At least that was all he would admit. He had been forgiven little, not because he needed little, but because he asked for little.

His problem was not too much sin. It was too little self-knowledge.

 

The Sin That Will Not Leave

This brings us to a hard question. Most of us have a particular weakness, a sin we have confessed again and again, prayed against the tears flowing, and even after that, found our self a week later back in the middle of the same thing.

We ask God to take it away. We beg him to give us the opposing virtue. And we're sure He will because, you know, it's obviously God's will that we be chaste rather than lustful, generous rather than greedy, patient rather than impatient.

So, why does He not sometimes answer that prayer right away?

Saint Paul faced something like this. He speaks of a “thorn in the flesh” and of his repeated pleading that God remove it. The answer he received was not removal: "but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me" (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul tells us plainly that the thorn was given “to keep me from being too elated” (2 Corinthians 12:7).

Its purpose was humility.

We must be careful here. God does not cause sin, and sin is never good. But the great teachers of the Church have long held that God permits what He does not will, in order to draw from it a greater good.

Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that God allows evils so that He might bring forth from them a good that would otherwise not exist. Saint Paul says the same of the whole drama of salvation: "but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Romans 5:20).

What if the weakness you keep bringing to God is being permitted, not as punishment, but because it's teaching you humility, dependence, an awareness of your complete reliance on Him?

What if He is not ignoring your prayer but answering a deeper one: the prayer to love Him more?

The person who has never fallen may admire God. They might even love him, if they think of it long enough. More about people like this in a minute, those who've never seemingly fallen to grave sin, but still have great love.

Still, for those who've fallen, they know what it's like to be lifted up. They know mercy that's totally undeserved. And if they reflect on their wretchedness enough, on all they've done, yet find He still loves them, He embraces them no matter, He's eager to hold them in His Heart, well... they'll love Him all the more.

 

The Mercy of Remembering

Scripture tells us God casts our sins away and remembers them no more. That is His prerogative. Yet He does not erase them from our memory. King David, long after his forgiveness, could still pray, "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me" (Psalm 51:3).

Why would God leave us the memory of what He Himself has chosen to forget?

Because that memory, rightly held, fertilizes the soil of our humility.

Saint Teresa of Avila taught that humility is nothing other than walking in the truth. And the truth about us includes both halves: that we fell, and that we were raised.

To forget the first is pride. To forget the second is despair. To hold both together is humility, and humility is where love takes root.

This is not the same as scrupulosity, which keeps picking at wounds God has already healed. The scrupulous person remembers the sin and doubts the forgiveness.

The humble person remembers the sin precisely in order to marvel at the forgiveness.

One memory breeds fear; the other breeds love.

The woman at Simon’s table did not weep because she doubted. She wept because she knew exactly how much of her debt had been cancelled.

 

Two Virtues, One Root

So two virtues are necessary if we mean to make progress in holiness, and they grow from the same ground.

Humility remembers the debt. Love responds to its cancellation.

You cannot have the second without the first, which is why Simon, for all his religious dedication, loved little.

He had nothing to be grateful for because he had never looked honestly at himself.

Gardeners know that the richest soil is made from what has died and broken down. Our failures, surrendered to God, become compost for charity. The very things we are most ashamed of, once forgiven, become the reason we love Him most.

 

Do we have to have fallen to love much?

Not at all. In fact, this is a question that faced St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who'd once been told in Confession that in all her life she'd never committed a single mortal sin. But there might not be a saint who knew God's love more.

Thérèse had heard the same stories from Scripture we have heard. She knew the story of Simon and the woman who wept at Jesus' feet. She wrote in her autobiography, Story of a Soul, "I had often heard it said... that He is more deeply loved by repentant souls than by those who have not lost their baptismal innocence. Ah! If I could but give the lie to those words."

To explain how a soul preserved from grave sin could love just as fiercely as one rescued from it, she used a brilliant analogy of a father who is a skilled physician:

"Let us suppose that the son of a very clever doctor, stumbling over a stone on the road, falls and breaks his leg. His father hastens to him, lifts him lovingly, and binds up the fractured limb, putting forth all his skill. The son, when cured, displays the utmost gratitude, and loves his father more than ever.

But let us take another supposition. The father, aware that a dangerous stone lies in his child’s path, anticipates the danger, and, unseen by anyone, hastens to remove it. The child, unconscious of the danger from which he has been saved, will not thank his father for it, but will love him just the same. But suppose he heard the whole truth, would he not in that case love him still more?"

Thérèse realized that God had not just healed her brokenness; He had cleared the road. She was the child whose path had been swept of the stones of mortal sin before she could ever trip over them.

"Well now, I am this child," she concluded, "the object of the foreseeing love of a Father... He has not waited for me to love Him much like Saint Mary Magdalen, but He has made me know how He has loved me with an anticipating love, so that I may love Him to madness."

Whether God heals the shattered leg or removes the stone before we fall, the Physician is the same. The love is the same. The woman at Simon’s table loved much because she was lifted from the dirt. Thérèse loved to madness because she was held so tightly she never hit the ground. 

Both memories—the memory of being rescued and the memory of being preserved—should break our hearts wide open with gratitude.

 

My own reflection

The reason I'm writing about this today is because it came to me last night. When I turned to pray last night, I tried to call to mind some scriptural truth. I recollected myself in God's presence. I allowed myself to speak and then waited in silence.

And then I started having absurdly dumb thoughts. Why? Because it was late, and I was falling asleep. And my dreams are always very, very, dumb. 

So, I gathered myself and went to bed, figuring I just wasn't going to be able to enter into deep contemplative prayer that night. God would understand, right?

Well, just as I was getting into bed, the words hit me, like a lightening bolt: whoever is forgiven much, loves much.

The inverse of what Jesus said to the woman at Simon's house. But it's implied in the text. And it came to me, in that very moment, precisely why God so often delayed to answer my prayers to remove temptations, to completely eradicate my struggle with some sins. And this is what I heard from Him in my meditation:

I have permitted this struggle precisely because I desire to give you a great love. How long has it been since you fell to this sin, and how much grace have I given you that what was once so frequent has now become rare? Yet you are aware of your wretchedness for one reason alone: that I might give you a great capacity to love me all the more! 

For those whom I have called saints are not excluded from their company on account of the size of their sins! They are saints on account of their great love! This love was not their own, it is my love that they receive and return to me! 

All human sin is finite, thus no matter how great one's is in comparison to another, they are equally nothing compared to my infinite love! One who sinned much, or sinned little, it matters not, for a all finite sin is less than a single drop of water cast into the blazing furnace of my love for you!

Yes, I have through this trial given you a great capacity in Love so that you might be more fully mine, for I am Love, and I wish to inhabit your little heart beyond what any finite heart can contain.

I wish to give you my Heart, and for this reason, while I have chosen to forget your past sins, as it is my prerogative, I will allow them to remain in your memory, for so long as you remain aware of your weakness, of your sin, all the more will you love me! And this is my greatest desire! That you would know love, and love! I require two virtues, and these alone suffice: humility and love. And these, together, will encompass all the rest! 

 

All of this seemed to have come to me in but a few minutes, but when I lifted my head from my pillow, I found I'd been in this prayer, in this conversation with my Lord, for more than an hour!

So much for being too tired to pray!

There is more I could say, but I've written it only in my private diary. For some of what Jesus tells me He does not yet wish for me to share. Though He does wish for me to write them down lest I forget them, for I am more prone to forget His graces than I am to forget my failures.

 

Living This Out

First, there are many things you could do, but it begins with change the way you pray about your sin, or your inclinations toward it. Keep asking God to remove it, but add a second petition: “Lord, until You do, teach me to love You through it.” Let every fall become an occasion to return, not to retreat.

Every fall into sin is but an occasion to run back into the arms of mercy. A thousand times I fall, a thousand times I will return. And God chooses to put the weight of infinite love upon the return, and none at all upon the fall for those who return to Him in this way.

Second, practice a memory of mercy. Once a week, deliberately recall one specific sin God has forgiven you, and rest in gratitude rather than shame. Begin every prayer in humility, recognize your failure, your weakness. This delights our Lord, for it is the soul who knows His own frailty who is best prepared to receive His love. Say thank you out loud.

Third, let your own forgiven debt change how you treat the debts of others. The one who knows he has been forgiven much finds it very hard to hold a grudge. Recognize that every sinner is someone with great potential to love, and pray that through their sin, they might find mercy, and in mercy, love.

Finally, when you examine your conscience, do not end with the list of failures. End at the feet of Jesus, where the woman ended, with the only response that makes sense of so great a mercy: love, love, love, and love again.

 

God Bless,

Judah