Survey Says

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Imagine a round of “Family Feud” with a survey of 100 people who were asked, “What is the most difficult part of being Catholic?” there would likely be responses like, “sexual morality;” “having to go to church every Sunday and holyday;” “not eating meat on Friday;” “having to listen to bad homilies;” and the like.  And probably any member of the team who responded thus would hear the comment, “Good answer!”
    But for those who take their faith life seriously, in addition to what that survey says, our Lord’s teaching today on forgiveness, which is also the focus of the first reading and the responsorial psalm, should be near the top if not at the top.  Yes, denying our passions requires effort.  Making time to worship God cannot occur without some planning and dedication.  And yes, Catholic priests and deacons are not always known for the best preaching.  But forgiveness!  That’s one of the hardest teachings to implement.  
    Forgiveness strikes us as such a difficulty for two reasons: one, we don’t necessarily understand forgiveness; and two, we have a God-given desire for justice which concupiscence usually taints.  Both of those factors increase the difficulty of forgiving.
    As for the first reason, I think that sometimes we say forgiveness, but we don’t truly understand the meaning of the word.  When some people say forgiveness, they mean that we pretend like the injury, the wrong-doing, never happened.  But pretending that something didn’t happen does not accord with the truth.  This understanding of forgiveness is cheap, because if nothing bad happened, then there’s nothing good about a person forgiving something which didn’t happen.  Plus, we can’t erase or change the past, as Rafiki in “The Lion King” reminds us.

    The further consequence of this understanding of forgiveness also lends itself to enabling others.  The wife who pretends like her husband didn’t do anything, when in fact he put his hands on her, only encourages the husband to continue to use physical violence because no one stops him.  I can’t tell you the number of sad times when I have encountered as a chaplain a woman who obviously receives abuse from her husband but does not wish to press charges because she doesn’t think it’s loving, or thinks that she’s forgiven him, he didn’t mean to do it, and so she just needs to pretend like it didn’t happen.  That is not forgiveness; that’s enabling.  The same principle can be applied to alcoholics.  
    Forgiveness is an act of charity, of willing the good of the other.  And what makes it so laudable is that it acknowledges the offense that has happened, but chooses not to hold that offense against the other.  This may sound like enabling, but the difference is that forgiveness does or can include allowing a person to experience the consequences of his or her actions.  If you steal $20 from me, I can forgive you and not hold that theft against you.  But I may not ever leave you alone near any money of mine.  A Michigan State Police recruit who wants to be Catholic recently asked me how he can be expected to forgive sexual assault perpetrators, especially when they prey on children.  I mentioned to this recruit that forgiving doesn’t mean the person doesn’t go to jail or prison, or doesn’t face the consequences of his or her actions.  But it means we hope for that person’s conversion, change of heart and change of life, so that it never happens again.  And we rejoice if that conversion does happen.
    A beautiful example of rejoicing in the conversion of someone who has harmed us is the relationship in heaven of St. Stephen and St. Paul.  For the celebration of St. Stephen’s feast day (26 December), St. Fulgentius of Ruspe, a bishop, writes:
 

Now at last, Paul rejoices with Stephen, with Stephen he delights in the glory of Christ, with Stephen he exalts, with Stephen he reigns. Stephen went first, slain by the stones thrown by Paul, but Paul followed after, helped by the prayer of Stephen. This, surely, is the true life, my brothers, a life in which Paul feels no shame because of Stephen’s death, and Stephen delights in Paul’s companionship, for love fills them both with joy.
 
Forgiveness is an act of great charity, which wills the good of the other, no matter what the other has done, even in the heroic example of St. Stephen willing St. Paul’s conversion and holiness, though St. Paul, before his conversion, had helped put St. Stephen to death.
    Forgiveness seems difficult to us because we also desire justice, each person receiving his or her due.  And when a person has disrupted the social order and committed a crime, we want a person to suffer the punishment.  In some sense this is good, because we want a society that is ordered to virtue, and we want to make sure that virtue is encouraged and vice is punished, since not everyone lives according to virtue.  But all too often, we go beyond justice, and we also forget mercy, so that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.  Forgiveness recognizes that my sense of justice may not be on the mark, and that God will deal out perfect justice, combined with perfect mercy, to the offender.  As the Gospel relates, we are all too ready to ask for mercy, but struggle to offer that same mercy ourselves.  Still, our Lord warns us here and elsewhere, that the measure of forgiveness that we give to others, is the measure of mercy we can expect to receive from Him.
    [Adam and Jamie, the Lord has shown great mercy to you.  While you were still sinners, Christ died for you, and offered the unmerited gift of baptism in another Christian community.  By doing so, He demonstrated His love for you.  But that love has led you to the fullness of the truth in the Catholic Church, so that you can receive even more love through the other sacraments, like Confirmation and the Eucharist which you will receive today.  You did not earn this gift, but God gives it to you freely so that you can live, as best as you can, as a disciple of Christ in full fidelity to what He has taught us through the Scriptures and the teachings of the Apostles.  You also, then, must be merciful and share that gift of salvation with those you meet, including the difficult way of life as a disciple to forgive those who offend us.]
    I would dare say that all of us struggle with forgiveness.  Whether “survey says” or not, forgiveness remains one of the hardest, or perhaps the hardest teaching of Christ for His disciples, for His Church.  May we, whom God has forgiven, forgive others ourselves, since God has paid the debt for our sins by the Passion and Death of His Son, Jesus Christ.

One of the Hardest Things about being Catholic

 Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    What’s the hardest thing about being Catholic?  Is it believing that Jesus, who looked just like us, is God?  Is it believing that Mary never sinned, and did not have original sin?  Is it trusting that Jesus will not allow His Church to teach anything about what we are to believe or how we are to live that goes against His will?  Is it that bread and wine are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit to truly become the Body and Blood of Jesus?  Is it having only one spouse for an entire life?  Is it not using artificial contraception, or artificial means of conceiving?   Is it going to church every Sunday and holyday?  Is it not lying, not gossiping, not coveting?  Or is it Jesus’ command that we hear today, that we are to forgive?
    Maybe some of those other things are hard for us as well, but I hazard a guess that forgiving someone who has hurt us is one of the most difficult parts of our faith.  I don’t mean forgiving someone who didn’t really do us that much harm, or even forgiving someone who did us harm, but whom we easily love and so we easily forgive.  And I don’t mean forgiving a stranger whom we don’t care about and will never see again.  I mean forgiving someone who truly pierced our hearts by their actions, by their betrayal, by their serious wrongdoing, whom we know, with whom we interact.  
    And yet, that’s what Jesus calls us to do as His followers.  We forgive, not only seven times, but seventy-seven times (and if you think that the number seventy-seven is meant to be exact, think again; it means over and over again).  Forgiveness should be easy, because, as the author of Sirach says, “Wrath and anger are hateful things.”  We usually stay away from things that are full of hatred.  But for some reason, we can cling to wrath, anger, and unforgiveness.  
    We think that by holding on to the pain, to the hurt, to the wrong, to our grudge, that it makes us more powerful.  We think that it hurts the other person by our being mad at them (when, in fact, the other person generally doesn’t know and/or doesn’t care).  So we nurture our hatred toward that person.  What that person did can be truly wrong, maybe even heinously wrong.  Maybe someone ruined our good name, or cost us our job.  Maybe someone inflicted great bodily harm against us, or, sometimes even worse than bodily harm, emotional or spiritual harm.  I’m not talking, and neither is the Lord, about ignoring the bad behavior, or saying that it doesn’t matter.  Forgiveness only means something when what happened does matter, and did really hurt us.  
    Perhaps even more striking than what Jesus teaches us about forgiving others, though, is that the way we forgive, or don’t forgive, others, is how we will be forgiven.  Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says it this way: the measure we measure out to others will in turn be measured out to us.  In other words, God will forgive us as we forgive others.  This shouldn’t come as a shock, though, because we say it each time we say the Our Father: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  May we take it as: forgive us, because we’re forgiving others.  But we can also look at it as: forgive us in the measure that we forgive others.
    I want you to close your eyes now.  Go ahead, close them.  Think of a person that has hurt you, that you are having a hard time forgiving, or maybe cannot forgive.  Think of that person’s face, their eyes.  Think about what that person did that you are finding it difficult or impossible to forgive.  Maybe you feel that hurt welling up inside you again, that anger pulsing through your body, wanting retribution, wanting justice, wanting revenge.  What words did you say to that person in anger?  
    Keep your eyes closed.  Now picture yourself standing before the judgement seat of Christ.  You are there, cognizant of your sinfulness, but wanting mercy, wanting to be welcomed into heaven.  You can almost feel the joy, the warmth, the light coming from just beyond where you are.  You can sense that you were made for that place, that it would complete you.  And from the mouth of Christ you hear the words that you spoke in anger to the person you cannot forgive.  What do you feel now?  
    You can open your eyes again.  If we really took that exercise seriously, it was probably pretty stark; maybe even scary.  I know it was for me as I composed this homily.  Jesus died for us, He forgave us for leading Him to the cross, not because He had to, but because He loves us.  He wants to forgive us, and the only thing that can stand in our way is our lack of forgiveness towards others.  So today, even if it can only be far away and can’t or shouldn’t be in person, forgive that person who has harmed you.  Let go of the hatred and the grudge you’ve been holding on to.  Forgive others, so that your heavenly Father can forgive you.

The Real Lesson of 9/11: Forgiveness

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            There are times in each of our lives, I believe, when God confirms in a very real way that He is in charge.  These are the moments when, without our planning, everything falls into place and a great blessing is bestowed or a great lesson is learned.  In these moments we experience wonder and awe in the presence of God who is the Lord of all History, to Whom all time belongs.

            Ten years ago, our country was attacked in a horrible way.  Innocent civilians lost their lives because of terrorists who chose hatred and death.  In those moments, it was very easy to wonder where God was.  As a senior in high school, and likely for many of you, for me it was a time of real fear at the evil that was unleashed by sinful men.

            And yet, here we are today, with readings that were chosen in the 1970s for the twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, chosen by men, guided by the Hand of God, about forgiveness.  There was no way that those men could have known what was going to happen on September 11, 2001.  There was no way for them to know that ten years after that event, September 11 would fall on a Sunday, the twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time.  And yet, here we are, with God confirming in a very real way in our midst the lesson of forgiveness that He wants us to embrace on the anniversary of a day that we as a country were sinned against.  We should have wonder and awe in the presence of God that all of these variables lined up just so.  As Pope Bl. John Paul II said, in Divine Providence, there are no such things as coincidence.

            Our lesson on forgiveness from the Divine Teacher begins with the first reading: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.  The vengeful will suffer the LORD’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail.  Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.  Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the LORD?  Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins?”  The words from the Book of Sirach are very challenging, but they are truth.  As the Letter to the Hebrews says, “The word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword…able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.”  Where are we in forgiving those who attacked us ten years ago?  Where are we in forgiving those who have hurt us since then, not only terrorists, but also neighbors, family, friends, co-workers?  “But Father, you don’t understand what they did!  I just cannot forgive them!  The pain they caused is too great!!”  Forgiveness is certainly difficult, especially when the offense comes from someone who is close to us.  And yet, we hear God in His inspired word saying that if we are holding on to wrath and anger, than we can count ourselves among the sinful.  If we do not forgive others, we will not be forgiven by God.  As Jesus says, “the measure which we measure out to others will in turned be measured out to us.”  The level at which we forgive is the level at which we can hope to be forgiven.  If we cannot forgive, then neither can we hope to be forgiven.

            Now, to be clear, forgiveness does not mean being a doormat.  Forgiveness does not mean ignoring past actions.  It does not mean that we do not guard our nation carefully.  It does not mean that we forgo screenings at airports.  It does not mean that we blithely trust someone who has betrayed our trust, especially in a major way.  But it does mean that we pray that God will extend His mercy towards them, and heal them of the evil that has grown in their heart, and that they will convert and be blessed by God with His love. 

            It is easy to hold on to hatred.  It is easy to carry a grudge.  It takes almost no effort at all.  The hatred and the wrath seem to bubble up naturally.  It takes real power, though, to forgive.  It takes real strength to be the bigger man, the bigger woman, to not hold on to past offenses.  When we see a person who has been wronged hating another, it almost seems commonplace.  When we see a person who has been wronged forgiving another, we are moved by that person’s soul.  Think of a mother who has lost her child to murder.  It is not newsworthy when she spews out more hatred toward the murderer.  It is newsworthy when that mother, in the midst of her real pain and sorrow, has the strength of soul to say to that murderer, “I forgive you.”  Does the murderer still go to jail?  Certainly.  But the mother is no longer imprisoned by her hatred, but has been set free by forgiveness.

            How many times do we forgive terrorists?  How many times do we forgive a spouse who has betrayed the spousal trust?  How many times do we forgive a friend who hurt us?  How many times do we forgive the stranger who changed the lives of so many by acts of violence and hatred?  Jesus tells us that we forgive them always, so that when we need forgiveness, maybe in small ways, maybe in big ways, our hearts are prepared to receive the forgiveness of God.  If we do not forgive, then our hearts are not open to receive the forgiveness that God wants to bestow upon us.

            “But what about justice, Father?  What about paying the price for your crimes?”  If you insist on justice, then let me lead you to the cross.  Let me lead you to Calvary, because that is where justice leads.  That is where justice led Jesus, who suffered for us, innocent as He was, so that we could have eternal life.  That is where He who shared our human nature died, fulfilling the justice that original sin required, so that we who share that human nature with Jesus could also rise with Him to glory.  We should be careful about insisting on justice, or asking that the “fires of [God’s] justice burn,” because we might just receive that justice, and the wages of sin is death, as St. Paul says.  Justice for sins brings death.  Forgiveness and love bring life.

Fr. Mychal Judge being carried out
by NY Emergency Personnel after the
South Tower collapsed

            What we saw on September 11, ten years ago, was that hatred only brings destruction and death.  Hatred led those terrorists to end the lives of so many innocent people in the World Trade Center buildings, at the Pentagon, and on United Flight 93.  Love, which is at the root of forgiveness, led Fr. Mychal Judge to care for the souls of those who were in the Twin Towers and to pray for them even as the South Tower collapsed.  Love led the many heroes of the police and fire department personnel to risk their lives to try to save others who were in and around the Twin Towers.  Love won that day.  Love builds us up to be more human, to be more in the image and likeness of God. 

We mourn those who lost their lives that fateful day.  We protect ourselves now from future attacks.  In the midst of it all, we pray for forgiveness.  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  Amen.