The "forgiveness" that has been popularized in the last few decades seems to me to be driven by selfishness and is way off base. Jesus is being used by people who haven't really studied His teachings as an excuse to relinquish one's responsibility toward others by backing away from and burying the evil that has been perpetrated toward us and others.
Before Jesus talks about forgiveness, (Mathew 18) He gives some guidelines about how to deal with someone who has done something you know to be wrong. First you go to them privately and discuss it. If they won't listen, you talk to one or two others to see what they think, and if they are agreement, you go back with the other person or persons. If they still won't listen, you take it to the extended community, and if they remain adamant you write them off.
After this, Peter asks if you should forgive "your brother" i.e. someone who has shown responsiveness and is still a part of your community "seven times". The reply is "seventy-seven," which is taken to mean, every time they need it.
Then comes the story about the servant whose debt was erased, who went out and threatened everyone who owed him. When the boss found out about it, he promptly sent the wretch off to jail.
I remember one woman on the Oprah show talking with enthusiasm about how if and when the perp who had seriously harmed her and was continuing to threaten her from his prison cell was released, she would invite him to her home for supper because she had "forgiven" him. It was insane, but illustrated clearly to me how wrong-headed this cheap make-myself-feel-better-right-now forgiveness is.
Forgiveness used to be really difficult - it was an act of release done for the benefit of the perpetrator to release them from the onus of hatred. Now it is just a way in which people release themselves from the responsibility that they should exercise on behalf of future victims, a way of burying their heads in the sand and "letting go" for the purpose of feeling good. It seems to me that when we have been harmed, we should take the hard steps to ensure, as far as we can, that what happened to us does not happen again to anyone else. There is a difference between a one time accident, an error in judgment, a mistake, and habitual inclinations that will drive the perpetrator to repeat the same offense again and again. When we have been harmed by such a predator, we need to carefully consider how we could best contribute to the protection of others by sharing our experience with law enforcement and others who may be able to help us deal with this experience and its ramifications in our lives and the lives of other past and potential victims.
To me the word victim seems loaded with a world of potential harm to the person who chooses to live under it's appellation. It suggests an abandonment of personal power to direct one's own path in life. It makes sense to make sure you have not slipped off the edge and given yourself over to hatred-fueled revenge. Fueled by hatred and revenge, you will not be able to think straight and change things for the better, so it is good to sort through things with a good friend or counselor, but the process should be geared towards ensuring justice in the community, not feeling comfortable about horrors that have been done to us and which could be perpetrated on other people if we fail to speak up or act. And it should release us from the confines of the helpless role that the word victim implies and lead us to self confident purposefulness.
One of the problems with our language is that we are molded by it into thinking that there is or even has to be a choice between "justice" and "mercy". When you think deeply about this, you realize that justice and mercy cannot exist unless they are both integral to the same decision. We see justice without mercy practiced by Al-Quada and Isil. Mercy without justice opens the cell doors to offenders who will kill and rape again. We need another term that everyone understands to incorporate both of these attributes. It makes no sense to keep on punishing someone who is appalled by what has occurred and will take steps to see that it never happens again, just as it makes no sense to subject society at large to people who are a threat to the safety and security of others.
When we have responsibly done all that we can there may come a time to "let go". There are things that can't be set right - and part of being reasonable is accepting what can't be changed and how that has changed us, yet going on with the life that we can have in the wake of whatever has happened.
Jesus also makes it clear that if we want to be forgiven for the things we regret having done, we need to forgive others for what they have done to us. But we must keep in mind that He is in no way advocating that forgiveness should pave the way for new atrocities, but to real peace, real community and justice/mercy.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Indwelling
Today, the first Sunday of Advent, The Divine Office reminds us that we are to consider the three comings of Christ - in history, today and at the end of time, as well as how we are to come to Christ.
Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, whose second miracle is being examined in the cause of her canonization, would inspire us to think not so much about coming to Our Lord, but about His increasing presence in us as we yield ourselves to Him.
She says:
"I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God, and God is in my soul."(Letter 122)
"A soul united to Jesus is a living smile that radiates Him and gives Him."
"I can't find words to express my happiness. Here there is no longer anything but God. He is All; He suffices and we live by Him alone." (Letter 91)
I think that in heaven my mission will be to draw souls, by helping them go out of themselves to cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement, and to keep them in this great silence
within, that will allow God to communicate Himself to them and transform them into Himself.
Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, whose second miracle is being examined in the cause of her canonization, would inspire us to think not so much about coming to Our Lord, but about His increasing presence in us as we yield ourselves to Him.
She says:
"I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God, and God is in my soul."(Letter 122)
"A soul united to Jesus is a living smile that radiates Him and gives Him."
"I can't find words to express my happiness. Here there is no longer anything but God. He is All; He suffices and we live by Him alone." (Letter 91)
I think that in heaven my mission will be to draw souls, by helping them go out of themselves to cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement, and to keep them in this great silence
within, that will allow God to communicate Himself to them and transform them into Himself.
Good Friday, 2011
Today is Good Friday, or was half an hour ago. I've been a senior citizen for more than a decade now, and, like most of us, an orphan without even an aunt or uncle left to call on the phone. Death does not unsettle me anymore.
When thinking about the events we commemorate on this day, I most often think of Mary standing unobtrusively near as they unfold until she stands beneath the cross watching her 33 year old son, a good boy and a fine man, suffer and die. It's hard for her to be there, but she has to be there, however much it hurts, because He is her son, He is in pain and she can't let Him go through this alone.
When someone explains the crucifixion in terms of balancing the scales of justice it makes no sense to me. What does make sense, however, is that in a world where everyone bears the responsibility for making his or her own decisions, mistakes are made, bad things, even evil things are as likely to happen as good things. Someday, perhaps, I may understand redemptive suffering, but right now the best I can do is understand this in terms of Jesus' example - - by choosing to forfeit rather than insisting on His rights, He averted a war. The take-home lesson is that we shouldn't do anything that will make things worse, even if that means refraining from insisting on our own rights. In that sense, allowing ourselves to suffer means others don't have to.
Sometimes the Good Friday service moves me to tears. This year, however, I walked away feeling empty. It was dimly reminiscent of the day not so long ago when I walked away from my best friend's grave, mildly surprised to realize that I am still alive, noticing that I would probably need to eat supper after a while.
This year I can follow Mary a bit farther. She will go home to pack up a few things and move in with John, or John will move into Jesus' room. What next? They didn't know back then, we don't know now. Fix supper, maybe. Pray.
When thinking about the events we commemorate on this day, I most often think of Mary standing unobtrusively near as they unfold until she stands beneath the cross watching her 33 year old son, a good boy and a fine man, suffer and die. It's hard for her to be there, but she has to be there, however much it hurts, because He is her son, He is in pain and she can't let Him go through this alone.
When someone explains the crucifixion in terms of balancing the scales of justice it makes no sense to me. What does make sense, however, is that in a world where everyone bears the responsibility for making his or her own decisions, mistakes are made, bad things, even evil things are as likely to happen as good things. Someday, perhaps, I may understand redemptive suffering, but right now the best I can do is understand this in terms of Jesus' example - - by choosing to forfeit rather than insisting on His rights, He averted a war. The take-home lesson is that we shouldn't do anything that will make things worse, even if that means refraining from insisting on our own rights. In that sense, allowing ourselves to suffer means others don't have to.
Sometimes the Good Friday service moves me to tears. This year, however, I walked away feeling empty. It was dimly reminiscent of the day not so long ago when I walked away from my best friend's grave, mildly surprised to realize that I am still alive, noticing that I would probably need to eat supper after a while.
This year I can follow Mary a bit farther. She will go home to pack up a few things and move in with John, or John will move into Jesus' room. What next? They didn't know back then, we don't know now. Fix supper, maybe. Pray.
Finding God in Lucia
This is the first Saturday of Lent, 2011. Today the Met broadcast its HD performance of Lucia di Lammermoor with Natalie Dessay. Since God is to permeate every part of the lives of believers, and for Catholics this should happen most especially during Lent, it seemed especially inappropriate at this time of year to go to an opera whose a plot is driven by characters who understand forgiveness as weakness, a sign of faithlessness, even a lack of virtue.
So, in order to make this Lenten diversion ok, one foolish believer proceeded to try to drag God, who is omnipresent, you understand, into what she considered to be an otherwise godless experience, praying for the performers as their images were cast onto the screen, for the conductor, the set designers, the crew, the audience at the Met and in the theater. And then of course, for everyone involved to grasp that revenge and hatred are not particularly sensible choices.
Our Lord may have been a bit amused, waiting, as he was, quietly for us all at the heart of Donizetti’s plot.
We have been taught to pray, “Our Father, Who art in Heaven”. Our omnipresent Father resides in Heaven. For us, then, heaven must be where we recognize God’s presence.
In her aria “Quando rapito in estasi” Lucia tells us that heaven opens for her through her love for Edgardo. She recognizes heaven - where God resides - in this relationship, which, for her would have become a consecrated marriage - her vocation in God - had she had the steely resolve of a saint, a wise spiritual adviser, or a reasonably decent brother.
But Lucia was no saint, refusing to do what was clearly wrong for her in her heart of hearts. Nor was her priest, who, out of the goodness of his misguided heart, urged her to violate the promise on which hinged the very essence of her spirit. Her brother, who at that point in his life was totally consumed with hatred and greed, was functionally sociopathic. Driven as he was to provide not just for his immediate family but for his clan as well, he was willing to lie and cheat to restore them all to prosperity, forging a letter from Edgardo, claiming that he was to marry someone else so that his sister could be manipulated into marrying the man whose wealth could put the clan back on it’s feet.
A saint would have refused to sign that marriage document and in a minute or two would have had her heaven on earth when Edgardo crashed the engagement party. And then, too, a saint would not have murdered her husband and from her grave enticed her beloved to commit suicide, as this performance suggests. And so this is a hauntingly beautiful - o those crystal clear tones - eternal tragedy. Except for the kind-hearted Donizetti, for whom Lucia is saved by her insanity, and for whom the two live happily in the ever after, however unrepentant they may remain.
And as for God, well, He is, of course, everywhere and that is our heaven. If we can manage to recognize where He becomes present in our lives and stay centered there, we might just encounter Him any old where, even in a plot based on a Scottish legend lamenting the tragedy of factional hatred and revenge.
So, in order to make this Lenten diversion ok, one foolish believer proceeded to try to drag God, who is omnipresent, you understand, into what she considered to be an otherwise godless experience, praying for the performers as their images were cast onto the screen, for the conductor, the set designers, the crew, the audience at the Met and in the theater. And then of course, for everyone involved to grasp that revenge and hatred are not particularly sensible choices.
Our Lord may have been a bit amused, waiting, as he was, quietly for us all at the heart of Donizetti’s plot.
We have been taught to pray, “Our Father, Who art in Heaven”. Our omnipresent Father resides in Heaven. For us, then, heaven must be where we recognize God’s presence.
In her aria “Quando rapito in estasi” Lucia tells us that heaven opens for her through her love for Edgardo. She recognizes heaven - where God resides - in this relationship, which, for her would have become a consecrated marriage - her vocation in God - had she had the steely resolve of a saint, a wise spiritual adviser, or a reasonably decent brother.
But Lucia was no saint, refusing to do what was clearly wrong for her in her heart of hearts. Nor was her priest, who, out of the goodness of his misguided heart, urged her to violate the promise on which hinged the very essence of her spirit. Her brother, who at that point in his life was totally consumed with hatred and greed, was functionally sociopathic. Driven as he was to provide not just for his immediate family but for his clan as well, he was willing to lie and cheat to restore them all to prosperity, forging a letter from Edgardo, claiming that he was to marry someone else so that his sister could be manipulated into marrying the man whose wealth could put the clan back on it’s feet.
A saint would have refused to sign that marriage document and in a minute or two would have had her heaven on earth when Edgardo crashed the engagement party. And then, too, a saint would not have murdered her husband and from her grave enticed her beloved to commit suicide, as this performance suggests. And so this is a hauntingly beautiful - o those crystal clear tones - eternal tragedy. Except for the kind-hearted Donizetti, for whom Lucia is saved by her insanity, and for whom the two live happily in the ever after, however unrepentant they may remain.
And as for God, well, He is, of course, everywhere and that is our heaven. If we can manage to recognize where He becomes present in our lives and stay centered there, we might just encounter Him any old where, even in a plot based on a Scottish legend lamenting the tragedy of factional hatred and revenge.
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