On Prayer 28.7

But if we are unwilling to become gentler toward those who owe us, we shall suffer what befell the one who did not forgive his fellow servant the “hundred denarii.” According to the parable in the gospel, though he had been forgiven before, the master arrested him and exacted what had been forgiven, saying to him, “You wicked and slothful servant,” “should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” Throw him “into” the “prison,” “until he pays all that is owed.” And the Lord adds to this: “So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if you do not forgive each his brother from your hearts.” They say, however, that we must forgive those who sin against us when they repent, even if our debtor does this many times; for “if your brother sins against you seven times in the day,” he says, “and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you shall forgive him.” It is not we who are harsh toward those who do not repent, but such people are evil to themselves; for “he who rejects discipline hates himself.” Yet even with such people we must seek in every way that healing may come to one who has become so perverse in everything that he is not even aware of his own evils, but is drunk with a drunkenness more destructive than that “from wine,” the drunkenness that comes from the darkness of wickedness.