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Forgive your
neighbor’s injustice;
then when you pray,
your own sins will be forgiven.
(Sirach 28:1)
Imagine the
embarrassment Peter must have felt when Jesus corrected Peter about
what forgiveness requires of Jesus’ disciples. Believing himself to
be making a pretty generous offer, Peter suggests forgiving those
who have wronged others seven times. But, Jesus would have
none of Peter’s pettiness, responding: “I say to you, not seven
times but seventy-seven times.”
For those of
us who may be mathematically inclined, Jesus doesn’t expect his
disciples to forgive others 490 times and then let them really have
it across the kisser the 491st time! No, Jesus uses the figure
“seventy-seven times” to symbolize the kind of perfect, deeply
heartfelt forgiveness required of anyone who would be one of his
disciples. Being committed to the effort to forgive as God
forgives, these women and men must forgive from the heart and
without ceasing. Why? Because forgiveness is the nature and the
requirement of love. And, it parallels perfectly how Jesus’
disciples are to pray: from the heart and without ceasing.
Forgiveness, then, may very well be the perfect prayer for disciples!
Contrast
Jesus’ teaching with how we oftentimes think about the pain and
suffering we’ve experienced and how we use these to justify our
resentment and wrath as well to hold back and not to forgive those
who have hurt us in one way or another. What we don’t oftentimes
think about, however, is how our unwillingness to forgive others
opens the door to death into our lives. As the late-Pope John Paul
II noted on many occasions, forgiveness and the culture of life are
as inextricably linked as are the lack of forgiveness and the
culture of death.
Could it be
true that
when we don’t
forgive others, while we may breathe, walk, talk, eat, sleep, and go
about our ordinary daily routine, we’re really dying or dead, never
really living our lives?
I became
aware of the truth of this insight years ago when I was studying
theology in an Eastern Orthodox seminary. At a conference one
evening, a Greek Orthodox theologian spoke compellingly about the
Eucharist and how it is the bond of Christian unity. After the
theologian completed his remarks, a Melkite-rite Archbishop thanked
the theologian for his beautiful words but wondered aloud how it was
possible in light of the theologian’s remarks that he and his church
refuse the Archbishop communion.
The
Melkite-rite Archbishop’s words sparked a conflagration. It was as
if someone had lit a match and thrown it into a pool of gasoline.
Within seconds, people in the audience were out of their seats,
tempers flaring; they were shouting, hurling accusations about who
did what and when centuries earlier, and they shook their clenched
fists at each other and called them and their ancestors hypocrites,
traitors, evil, and other awful names. To me, it looked like a
streetfight was about to break out.
At the time,
I thought to myself, “How can events that are nearly one thousand
years old spark such animosity today? For them, it’s like all of
this happened just yesterday.”
I’m sure many
of us have wondered at one time or another how it’s possible that
hatred, violence, and murder have divided people for centuries in
the Mideast, in Eastern Europe, and in Ireland. For those of us who
are neither heir to nor immersed in the history, it’s obvious that
forgiveness has the power to heal those centuries of mayhem and
death and to usher in centuries of peaceful living.
Even so, as
the pain and suffering associated with past hurts hits closer to
home, it’s not so obvious to those who nurture resentment and wrath
that forgiveness is the key to their healing and to a new life.
It all starts
innocently enough when we’re
young kids. Who hasn’t heard a youngster yell at a brother or
sister, “I hate you!” But, it doesn’t stop there. Kids
grow up and become adults who can cite chapter and verse, date, time
of day, and temperature as well as every particular about the day a
sibling hurt them and why these adults are perfectly justified in
not forgiving those people. Other adults do the same, but they
cite all of those gory details and ascribe them to in-laws, whether
it’s one’s mother-in-law, father-in-law, daughter-in-law, or
son-in-law. Then, there are older adults, too. Etched
indelibly upon their hearts are the first very hurts from decades
ago and every subsequent hurt that they’re completely unwilling to
forgive. Try convincing all of these people that forgiveness
will dissipate the self-imposed burden and enable them to live once
again! Think about all of the lives where death reigns and
what people believe is life is really nothing more than a mausoleum!
I’m sure we
all know of women and men who are divorced. We know all of the
pain and suffering that concluded in yet another tragic divorce.
We also know how the resentment and wrath culminated in the
unwillingness to forgive a former spouse, and this has become for
all practical purposes the moment when life ended—they opened the
door to spiritual death—and that moment has become the standard
against which this person measures all of life. Try convincing
this person that forgiveness will dissipate the self-imposed burden
and enable this person to live once again. Don’t give up
because I know of cases in which the offended spouse has found in
one’s love for the other and in the help that comes from prayer the
strength to forgive one’s spouse. The power of forgiveness
resurrected the marriage from the ashes; and, a new life together was born.
Perhaps we
may know of parents whose child has been killed by a drunk driver.
Their feelings of grief and loss know no bounds, but their lack of
forgiveness is completely bounded like one of those “gated”
communities. Harboring feelings of resentment and wrath will never
bring back a deceased child; these feelings only open the door to
more death, namely, the life they do have. Yet, try to convince
these parents that forgiveness will enable them to get beyond their
quite understandable feelings and to live their lives freed from the
tragedy inflicted upon them. How many people do you know who “died”
the moment tragedy entered their lives and have not lived one day
since?
In any year,
there are more than 700,000 attacks in homes as a result of
“domestic violence.” The victims? Spouses, children, and even
police officers called to the scene to intervene. In the aftermath,
feelings of resentment and wrath towards the violent person almost
never seem to dissipate. Years later, these feelings oftentimes
will re-emerge when a victim of domestic violence becomes a
victimizer. It seems that the victim’s experience—in terms of the
loss of a happy home, upbringing, and dreams unfulfilled—has exerted
a death grip on the victim’s life. Now, try convincing this person
that forgiveness will free him from the tomb! Yet, I know
personally of many people who spent years in therapy trying to
“recover” from the evils inflicted on them through domestic
violence. In many instances, real healing came when they admitted
that they loved this person and prayed for the strength to forgive.
And, as they saw that person through God’s eyes, their own lives
were resurrected from the ashes, a new life was born, and they had
compassion for the person who had hurt them.
I can go on and
on, citing how easily people succumb to the temptation to not
forgive and end up leading lives like
“dead men
walking.”
Several years
back in the journal Pastoral Life, Father Benedict Auer,
O.S.B., of St. Martin’s College in Lacey, Washington, related a
story that speaks to this awful reality—the reality of opening the
door to death and never living another day of life. Fr. Auer wrote
about a former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp who was visiting
a friend who shared the ordeal with him. “Have you forgiven the
Nazis?” he asked his friend. “Yes,” the friend responded. “Well, I
haven’t,” the man stated defiantly. “I’m still consumed with hatred
toward them.” “In that case,” his friend said gently, “the Nazis
still have you imprisoned.”
When we
perceive that another has harmed us, it’s so very easy to refuse
forgiveness. But, the result is always deadly as we open the door
for resentment and wrath to destroy our lives. Only forgiveness has
the power to break this vicious cycle and to open the door to new
life. So here’s the scoop, spiritually speaking: the more
central the need to forgive others is in our personal lives, the
more likely we are fail to understand how crucial forgiveness is,
that is, if we really want to live a full and happy life.
Think about
it.
When we put
an end to blaming others for what they’ve done to us and how they’ve
ruined our lives, we will find our relationships with family
members, friends, and acquaintances improving. We will discover
ourselves feeling happier and more fulfilled. Our interactions in
our workplaces, in our cars in traffic jams, and in other situations
will improve, reducing our irritability and stress levels.
While we may
have many reasons to hold onto our resentment and wrath, what we are
doing in effect is to make false idols of them and to worship them
on the altar of narcissism. Doing so is spiritually deadly
because it only makes it impossible for us to experience the
forgiveness God has already extended us in Christ Jesus, as St. Paul
tells us.
From a
different perspective, Sirach writes that it is only
when we forgive others that our own sins will be forgiven. That’s
why Sirach calls resentment and wrath “hateful things” and calls
“sinners” those people who allow resentment and wrath to shape how
they spend their days and relate with other people. Resentment and
wrath are “hateful” because they breed a culture of death. Mired in
these hateful things are “sinners” who prefer the culture of death to
the culture of life.
Jesus’
teaching about forgiveness—namely, that it must be perfect, from the
bottom of our hearts, and without any holding back whatsoever—is
hard for many of us to swallow. When we’re hurt, we desire revenge,
as if a debt is owed us—a debt we will not forgive—until we are paid
back in full. But, Jesus’ call to forgive is absolute and
unconditional. There’s no room for holding grudges nor is there any
room for harboring resentments. Forgiveness must be heartfelt and
complete, just as God has completely forgiven us. Remember: where
love abounds, so does forgiveness; where love is absent, so is
forgiveness. That why, as we practice forgiveness now, the
discipline of love prepares us to accept God’s forgiveness as well
as to recognize as equally beloved by God all of those who stand in
need of our forgiveness.
A parishioner
once asked her pastor, “What will the first moment after death be
like?” The pastor responded:
Imagine this:
Immediately after death, you will find yourself sitting in a square
room that appears to be about eight feet wide and fifteen feet
high. Surveying the room, you see no windows or vents; the room is
completely enclosed. But, you notice a swinging door located on the
wall to your right about eight feet above the floor.
Sitting on the
chair, you then see—directly facing you—that person, the one
person you loved least during your life. It’s the person you have
never forgiven for all of the pain and suffering that person caused
you. Simultaneously, you realize that the swinging door is the
doorway to the glory of eternal life.
Now is the
decisive moment: The only way for the two of you to escape this room
for the glory just beyond the swinging door will be if you forgive
that person so that you can help each other pass through the door to
enter the glory of eternal life.
Matthew wrote
his gospel primarily to expose religious frauds. In last week’s
gospel, Matthew spoke about forgiveness by criticizing people who
excommunicate tax collectors but, in reality, excommunicate
themselves because for their unwillingness to forgive the tax
collectors. In this week’s gospel, Matthew is more provocative as
he challenges his readers to ask themselves: Why do I not forgive?
Why do I hold grudges? For Matthew, the answer is simple: pride.
We put ourselves first—not love of God and neighbor—and make
ourselves the center of our own little universe. This narcissism
then opens the door to the culture of death, as we live only for
ourselves and give not one whit about the unforgivables who have
hurt us.
Matthew
suggests that people who don’t forgive are the people who are truly
heartless. They are dead not alive, always justifying why they
don’t need to forgive those who have hurt them. These religious
frauds don’t have authentic human relations because they don’t trust
others, bear grudges, and justify themselves by condemning others.
They are dead and don’t know it, expecting everyone else to be
perfect, but hiding behind the fig leaves masking their
imperfection.
Is that
describing us?
To live as a
disciple, Matthew puts before each of us a very difficult question
that we must answer: “If you are not able to forgive, do you at
least pray from the depths of your spiritual poverty for the strength to forgive those who have hurt you?” As
the model of this type of prayer, Matthew places before the readers
of his gospel Jesus hanging on the Cross. Remember his last
prayer? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.”
Now is the time
to put aside all of the resentment and wrath that separates us from
each other and breeds the culture of death. We do so just prior to
receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, when we pray “Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
When we mean the words our lips profess, the power of forgiveness is
the power that opens the door to the culture of life.
A brief commercial
break...
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HOMILY
