“Reflection: Must We Forget?”

ABSTRACT This reflection has not yet been preached. As a Catholic laywoman, I do not have a place to preach directly to an assembly of the faithful, but as a lay member of the Order of Preachers, I answer the call to preach by writing. The texts are those for the 24h Sunday in Ordinary Time of Year A in the Catholic lectionary: Sirach 27:3–28:7; Psalm 103; Romans 14:7–9; Matthew 18:21–35. My approach is that of a Catholic feminist theology student; I combine close reading of the biblical text and commentaries, my own experience of abuse and healing and study of the literature of abuse and healing, and a critical approach to accreted meanings and underlying assumptions about key words in the faith; in this case, the critical examination is of the way forgiveness has been confused with forgetting.