forgiveness

Read more about the article Mercy

Mercy

“Who was the man’s neighbor?” “The one who showed him mercy.” (Lk 10:36-37)

We are all familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan – a man beaten and left for dead is ignored by those who had an obligation to help him but is rescued by a foreigner.  What we tend to miss in this story is Jesus’s command, “Go and do likewise.” (Lk 10:37)  We all want mercy extended to us, but do we extend it to others?  Do we really treat others as our neighbor?

In March 2020 we commonly heard the phrase “we are all in this together.”  Yet we have become more fractured and divided than ever.  People have been saying horrendous things to other people online for quite some time, and now we have graduated to saying these things in person.  We have come to see a masked face as just a computer screen, forgetting there is a person on the other side.  We have come to think that if someone disagrees with us that person does not deserve to be treated with respect.  In denying the humanity of other people we are in danger of losing our own.

How do we reverse this dynamic?  The first step is contemplating why we want to change it. In Les Misérables, one of the greatest Catholic novels of the 19th century and one of the most enduring musicals of the 20th century, Victor Hugo contemplates just that.  Jean Valjean serves 20 years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.  When he gets out of prison, there is no family left and he cannot find work because his papers (sound familiar?) show that he had committed a crime.  Desperate, he seeks refuge at a church where a kind bishop serves him a meal and gives him shelter for the night.  Jean Valjean is arrested later that night for stealing his silver.  The bishop could choose to let Valjean be arrested, but instead tells the policemen that the silver was indeed a gift to Valjean and then turns to Valjean and says, “But my friend you left so early, surely something slipped your mind.  You forgot I gave these also, would you leave the best behind?” and hands him two silver candlesticks.  Valjean cannot understand why the bishop was so merciful to such an undeserving person and the bishop tells him, “By the witness of the martyrs, by the Passion and the Blood, God has raised you out of darkness, I have bought your soul for God!”

The moment of mercy is the turning point of the entire story.  Valjean recognizes his own forgotten humanity and turns his life around.  Several times he risks his freedom to help another person simply because showing them mercy was the right thing to do.   The mercy that he was shown preserves his freedom, but it is showing mercy to others that transforms his own soul.

We are familiar with the words of Jesus, “Be merciful as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36) but as we read the parable of The Good Samaritan, we often forget the scribe’s original question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal Life?” (Lk 10:25)

Works Cited

Boublil, Alain, Schönberg, Claude-Michel, Kretzmer, Herbert. “Les Miserables.” Les Miserables Script.pdf, Alain Boublil Music Ltd., 1985.

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables. Mint Editions, 2021.

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Read more about the article Blessed Are The Merciful

Blessed Are The Merciful

This Lent is different from every other Lent we have ever experienced and we all can sense that we need to respond to Our Lord’s call to repent.  We are sincere in our desire to do better, just as we are every year, but this year we need to go deeper.  Every Lent we work on giving up our vices, sins, and bad habits and succeed for a short time, but then we slide backward.  This happens because we are only pulling out the weeds that are easily visible; we need to dig deep and pull out the roots.  At the root is our lack of forgiveness.  Yes, we do struggle to forgive, again and again, and we keep having to forgive every time something triggers the memory of the hurt and the pain.  We need to get to that place where we can let go of the pain.

Letting go of the pain is not easy.  As bad as it is, it is ours and we therefore hold onto it.  Sit with that a minute because I am pretty sure you have not thought about it quite this way before.  The hurts we have experienced, whether physical, emotional, or psychological can run very deep.  When we refuse to let them go, it is like keeping a vicious dog chained in our yard near our front door.  Every time we go near the dog it bites us.  We should get the dog out of our yard, but we don’t.  We keep letting it bite us and injure us every time we go by.  We have anxiety about leaving the house, but we still keep the dog.  Even worse, it keeps our beloved Jesus on the other side of fence when he really wants to be invited and welcomed into our home.  Yes, our lack of forgiveness creates a barrier so that Jesus is unable to dwell in our hearts (He respects our free will) and bring with Him His peace.

There are so many different reasons how and why we got here, but there is one path out of this pain.  We need to take our suffering to Jesus.  Confess our sins and our lack of forgiveness.  The Holy Spirit can bring us graces to help us.  Spend time in Eucharistic Adoration every week.  It is in the silence that Jesus comes to us to heal us.  This takes time, so carve out an hour a week for a new habit.  Meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries.  What was Jesus experiencing and how was He feeling?  He has experienced every suffering that we have ever had so He understands.  If we offer up our suffering to Him and join it to His suffering on the Cross, our suffering takes on redemptive value, and like Jesus, our Heavenly Father will send us angels to help us in our suffering and our own St. Simon to help us carry our crosses.  The cross doesn’t go away, but we will be at peace and be given the grace to let go.

Once the vicious dog is gone, we can transform our hearts into an inviting garden. We find it easier to replace bad habits with good habits.  Our prayers and Lenten offerings really become magnified and our prayers are more fruitful.  A heart that gives mercy is also more open to embracing the mercy that Jesus offers us.  When Jesus emerges from the tomb on Easter Sunday, we too will emerge as a better version of ourselves, ready to receive the renewal of the gifts the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

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Read more about the article The Leper is Healed

The Leper is Healed

In today’s Gospel, Jesus heals a leper.  In Biblical times, leprosy was incurable and highly contagious. It was considered a punishment for sin.  People believed that what was on the inside was manifested on the outside.  The leper was therefore not shown mercy, but cast out from society.  When Jesus approaches the leper and touches him, this is the first human contact the leper has had in years.  The leper has lived apart from family and friends and has not received a human touch let alone a hug for a very long time.  Jesus reaches out with compassion, mercy, and love and touches him, healing first his broken spirit and then healing his body.

In our society today, leprosy is more widespread than ever and far more damaging because it is on the inside where we don’t readily see it and we are insensitive to the damage it causes because we have lived this way for so long.  Jesus comes to us this Lent to heal us of our leprosy.

Our leprosy is a disease of the heart.  How many times have we been rejected from family and friends because we don’t conform in some way to who they think we should be or how they believe we should think?  How many times do we feel the need to “fit in” because we are afraid that others won’t like our real selves?  How many times do we have judgmental thoughts or say unkind things about others because they are different from us?  Each of us has been both the leper and the one who has treated another as a leper in some way. This is precisely what Jesus wants to heal in us and He will heal us if we approach Him with faith.

Jesus knows everything about us; we cannot hide our flaws, idiosyncrasies, or sins from Him.  Yet when we were in sin He died for us.  Even in our most unlovable moments, He still loves us.  More than anything else, this fact should give us the courage to look deep inside ourselves because He will heal everything we don’t like seeing if we ask Him.  He awaits our approach to give us His mercy, the same mercy He had for the lepers of biblical times.  His mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation completely restores us and cleans even our darkest corners.

He wishes to heal our woundedness from being treated as a leper as well.  Just as He touched the leper, He touches us in the holy Eucharist.  He places Himself in our hands.  This isn’t a figure of speech.  God Himself descends from Heaven and transubstantiates – changes – the bread and wine into Himself.  We have the incredible gift of being able to touch Him and be touched by Him every day of our lives.  How many wounds He can heal if we trust Him! This Lent He invites us to be reconciled with Him.  He waits for us with mercy, ready to forgive.  He waits for us with love and compassion, ready to heal.  We don’t have to be lepers anymore.  The fulness of Easter joy awaits us if we simply ask Him to touch us.

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Read more about the article Forgive Us Our Sins

Forgive Us Our Sins

As we forgive those who sin against us.  When we pray the Our Father (also known as The Lord’s Prayer), we always mean the first part, but do we really mean the second part?  If we are honest with ourselves, we all squirm a little on this one.   We all want to be forgiven, but extending that forgiveness to those who have hurt us or our family members is much more difficult.  So, is this “forgive us as we forgive others” a lofty ideal to which we aspire, or is absolutely essential that we do it?  Can we do it?

The Church is full of examples of heroic virtue, including modern saints like Mother Teresa (now St. Teresa of Calcutta) and Pope St. John Paul II. These saints often seem so high above us that we often think “Oh, I’ll never make it that far,” even though they were people just like us who simply chose to love God.  So today I am writing about an ordinary person that inspired me: Betsie TenBoom. I learned about Betsie in high school when I read The Hiding Place by Corrie TenBoom.  Corrie recounts how she and her sister Betsie, devout in their Dutch Reformed faith, chose to hide Jews from the Nazis after the invasion of Holland.  When the Nazis stormed the TenBoom home, they didn’t find the hidden Jews but they did find the extra ration cards which were illegal to possess.  Betsie and Corrie were sent to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp. Miraculously, they smuggled in their Bible and shared their faith with many who had lost hope. Betsie maintained a disposition of gratitude, even thanking God for the fleas because it kept the guards out of their dormitory so they could read the Bible to their fellow inmates undisturbed. Betsie always told Corrie “no hate” and continually prayed for the souls of the guards even though she was  frequently beaten by them.  Even Corrie was amazed at Betsie’s forgiving heart and steadfast focus on God.  As she lay dying in the infirmary, she told Corrie, “When you leave here you must tell people that there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.  They will believe you because you have been here.”  These words have remained with me my whole life.

Forgiveness is possible, but why is it so necessary that Jesus devoted several parables to it?  Forgiveness is more about us than it is about those who have wronged us.  When we choose not to forgive, we hold onto anger for so long that it turns into either rage or depression.  We then harm not the transgressor, but those around us as well as ourselves.  Forgiveness does not  mean letting the transgressor “get away with it,” it means letting ourselves get away from it.

Forgiveness is an act of the will.  We will ourselves to forgive.  By choosing to put down this burden we carry, we free ourselves to open our arms wide to receive the embrace of Jesus.  When we allow ourselves to be embraced by Him, He can then heal our wounds and give us His peace. “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Forgiveness is like throwing a stone into a still pond and seeing the ripples reach the shore.  Just as evil, even evil done in secret, affects the entire world, so too does every good act we do, especially when we do it for love of Jesus. When we extend the mercy we have received from Our Lord to others, it multiplies beyond what we can see. Forgiveness therefore brings many graces of mercy, not only upon ourselves, but upon our world. 

We know that Christ died once for all sin, but He still suffers when we sin today.  This is part of the mystery of the mystical body of Christ.  We suffer from sin, but as the head of our mystical body, He suffers too.  When we embrace mercy to the point of praying for those who have harmed us, our prayers assist in their conversion and their conversion ameliorates the suffering of Jesus.  So even if we struggle to love our neighbor, we can pray for our neighbor because we love Jesus and want to ease His suffering.  This love for Him which compels us to pray for others transforms our own hearts and creates a home in which Jesus can dwell.  This is the essence of “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  We can experience Heaven on earth, knowing the peace of God, when we allow God’s mercy to dwell in our hearts. This is the mercy and peace that Betsie experienced, even in a concentration camp. “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Reference: Boom, Corrie Ten, et al. The Hiding Place. Hendrickson Publishers, 2015.

Continue ReadingForgive Us Our Sins

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