Forgiveness is easy to say and hard to live. In this week’s Monday Meditation, Perpetua takes us not to a monastery or a mountaintop, but to the attic—yes, the attic with pull-down stairs, Rubbermaid bins, and all the tensions of ordinary married life. There, in the dust of daily stubbornness, the Gospel’s sharpest parable takes on surprising intimacy. What does it mean to forgive not just with our lips, but with our hearts? How do we lay down our ledgers, our secret receipts, and open the door to mercy? Journey with us through humor, confession, and the deep healing truth of Christ’s mercy in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

Monday Meditation: The Receipt I Kept

Matthew 18:23–35 — The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

Let’s be honest: if you want to know whether you’re truly becoming like Christ, try putting things into your attic with your spouse while nursing a headache and a soul full of pride.

That’s how it began—Saturday, not with incense or chanting, but with dental pain, leftover fatigue, and me still in pajamas, dragging myself toward the attic ladder—the one that folds down from the ceiling like a medieval drawbridge to domestic warfare.

The plan was simple enough: put things away, tidy up. But clarity of plan does not guarantee unity of spirit, especially when your husband’s storage philosophy is rooted in engineering precision and yours in emotional archeology. “No, we can’t put that box up there,” I insisted, “it holds the baby shoes, the church bulletins, and my grief.”

There we were—two stubborn monastics of domestic life—trying to climb into heaven by way of Rubbermaid bins and snappish commentary. St. James was right: the tongue is a fire. Mine sparked, his sparked, and before long the silence between us was thick and heavy, a silence that felt less like peace and more like exile.

My husband, as he often does, reached for reconciliation. His apology was clear, honest, and kind. I, eager to appear righteous, gave the expected reply: “I forgive you.”

The truth is, my mouth said the words, but my heart kept the receipt.

Somewhere inside, I was still tallying the debt. I wanted to keep my small claim of superiority, the delicious thought that I was the more patient one, the more reasonable one, the long-suffering spouse who had risen from her dental miseries to endure this attic trial with heroic restraint.

It sounds absurd when spoken aloud, but isn’t that precisely how sin works? Cloaked in self-pity, parading as virtue.

Then Sunday’s Gospel came.

The parable of the unforgiving servant thundered into my small attic drama with unrelenting clarity. A servant forgiven ten thousand talents—an unpayable sum—who refuses to release his neighbor from a trivial debt. That servant is not some long-ago figure.

That servant is me.

It was at this moment I thought of the saint whose name I bear—Perpetua of Carthage, who, before her martyrdom, saw in a vision a perilous ladder guarded by a dragon. She climbed it barefoot, reaching at last into a garden of peace.

I smile at the thought, for my own “ladder” is only a pull-down staircase to the attic, cluttered with bins and bickering. Her vision reminds me that every ladder—whether leading to martyrdom or to household chores—becomes holy ground when climbed with Christ.

Her courage convicts me: if she could mount her ladder toward the beasts with steadfast faith, surely I can climb mine with mercy, laying down my pride along the way.

Christ’s parable is a mirror. It declares that to refuse mercy is to refuse salvation—not because God is cruel, but because we are the ones who bar the door, bolting it from the inside, locking ourselves in with our bitterness and pride.

The Liturgy calls us each week to do what I failed to do in the attic: “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess.” We stand side by side, proclaiming love, while inwardly some of us (and by “some,” I mean me) still clutch our ledgers.

Forgiveness is not a casual favor we bestow when we feel magnanimous. It is communion with the very life of God, whose essence is mercy.

It is never a polite performance. Forgiveness is the crucifixion of the ego, the laying down of the self that longs to be right. Forgiveness is a kind of death, as real as the one Christ endured. But, like His, it does not end in death. Resurrection waits for those who dare to bury their pride.

I wish I could tell you that, having reconciled, we lifted the boxes in perfect unity, ascending the ladder together like saints in an icon, haloed by dust motes.

The truth is simpler, awkward, human.

I am still praying that my words will become flesh. I am still asking Christ to soften the corners of my attic-cluttered heart, to loosen my grip on the secret receipts I clutch against those I love most.

And perhaps this is what forgiveness really is—not a single heroic moment, but a daily road, sometimes barefoot, sometimes limping, yet never walking alone. Christ Himself takes the steps with us, even up attic stairs.

This is not just about my marriage, or my attic.

The world itself groans under the weight of unforgiveness—“Lord, have mercy” is the cry of nations as well as souls.

Families estranged.
Nations at war.
Communities divided.

We see it in the headlines and in the pews. The small, stubborn act of forgiveness—spoken in a kitchen, whispered in a parish hall, prayed over in the secret chamber of the heart—opens a crack through which the Kingdom of God can break in.

This is my prayer for the week: that I will kiss the man I sparred with on Saturday.

That I will drink my humble coffee with a heart unclenched. That I will remember, when I whisper “forgive me” before the Chalice, Christ answers, without hesitation, with His very Body and Blood: “I do.”

The attic remains. The bins remain. My stubbornness remains. But so does mercy.

Even there. Even for you. Even for me.

Glory to God for all things.

Perpetua

“God requires not merely to forgive with the lips, but from the heart.”

— St. John Chrysostom

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”

— Fr. Thomas Hopko

“Forgive others their sins and your own soul will find peace. Cling to grudges, and you chain yourself to death.”

— Fr. Philip LeMasters

“Mercy is the face love wears when it meets suffering. If we want to look like Christ, we must be willing to wear it.”

— Frederica Mathewes-Green