How do we treat our family members and friends? What about our enemies? How do we treat them? Do we treat them as persons, to be loved, respected and with dignity; or do we treat them as things, to be used, abused, and discarded? Unfortunately, some of us treat different people differently according to who and what they are, even though we claim to be Christians. For example, we treat our family members well, but how do we treat the maid or servant in our homes? Do we treat them as persons, or do we make them work our monies worth?
In today’s Gospel, the king initially treated the servant as a thing, and since the servant could not pay his debt, the king thought he had every right to sell of the servant and the servant’s family, to repay the debt. The servant was just like any other thing or commodity, to be bought and sold at leisure. But when the servant pleaded to the king for mercy, the king had a change of heart and treated the servant as a person, with compassion and mercy. So the servant was given back some dignity, and he should have done the same for his fellow servant. But this servant was ungrateful, since the dignity restored to him was not shared with his fellow servant, and in the end, this servant ended up worse than before, for failing to treat his fellow servant with the same dignity his master had treated him.
What about us? Are we treating others with the same dignity that God treats us? Do we treat the people who serve us, who work in our homes as maids, who do many things to make our lives comfortable, with love and dignity? God treats all of us with love and dignity regardless of who we are or what sort of status we have in society; may we too learn to do the same.