Pay Back
- Gary Fritsch
- Sep 10, 2025
- 3 min read
As a society, it seems as though we have become hyper-focused on the pay-back. We are going to make people pay for the way they have treated us. We demand apologies, ostracize people, maybe even sue them to be compensated for our 'pain and suffering'. Law firms advertise that they will 'make them pay'. This is our picture of justice. While I am not advocating for lawlessness, and neither is Jesus, He introduced over 2000 years ago a concept that we are still struggling to put into action: Love your enemies.
Good parenting (or our attempts at it) can be a fertile ground for learning our lessons about God's desired relationship with us. Parents, when implementing a punishment for the child for a particular transgression of family rules, or perhaps just rules of decent behavior, do so in order that consequences might be attached to the action, but in the midst of it, don't stop loving their child. I think many of us might recall the line "this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you" meaning that the punishment is hard to dole out to someone whom you love.
Certainly it is more challenging to apply this mode of thinking to those whom we see as enemies. In the first reading today, St. Paul, who comes to define love in words as well as anyone, says this: "Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do." Well, I think that sums it up, my work is done here...OK while it does say it well, I still need to be able to do it.
I will share that this is an area of sin for me that I often have to bring to confession. I can be slow to forgive; judgmental; demanding. Most often this voice plays loudly in my head but comes out as: "oh it's OK." I am grateful when the filter works, but sometimes I can just blurt it out, or I can let it simmer within me as my words speak forgiveness by my heart seeks something else. I am going out on a limb here and thinking I am not alone.
Don't give up, don't give in, keep striving to be forgiving and understanding and compassionate. Every time you practice it, you will become better at it. Today's reading made me think of a new lens to put on it. Instead of wanting to pay someone back for what THEY have done to us, we should seek to pay them back for what Jesus has done for us. To restore us to friendship with the Father, He took on the pain of every sin (wrap up every feeling of injustice, being wronged, being ripped off, being cheated, being abandoned, being maligned, being physically hurt and mentally abused). He FELT ALL OF THIS FOR US. The cross He carried was a physical thing, but it was not nearly as harrowing as the effects of EVERY SIN that He felt in His truly human heart on our behalf. He did that, so that we might let it go.
As the superhero of superheroes, He absorbed every blow that sin could deal out, so that we could be freed from it. To refuse to avail ourselves of it might be the greatest insult. Imagine spending every penny you had and months and months of time preparing something for someone you loved and having them say, 'no thanks, I'm good'. As carriers of Christ (St. Paul says 'put on Christ') to the world, the main thing we can bring is His forgiveness. This is not the peace or the justice that the world gives, it is something totally different and we are called to deliver His very particular and very loving 'pay back'.
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