Anne's First Thursday Talk from Ireland

February 2016 First Thursday Talk for prayer groups and personal reflection. Available in both video and text.

 

 

(click photo to play video)

We gather together tonight on the cusp of a Lenten journey. We may have mixed emotions about Lent. Some dread the thought of restricting food or entertainment. Others relish the idea of diving more deeply into spiritual concepts for forty days. Either way, Lent is nearly upon us and God will have thoughts about how we should journey with Him during this period of purification and penance.

And so we must contemplate. We look into our prayer life for direction and consider ourselves, with God’s help. What is our condition? What habits or fixations might be interfering with our joy? What do we need to let go of? Where does our thinking need to change? Where do we need healing? Is there an old wound around which we need recovery? The Stations of the Cross have rich textures and depths for us. Here was Jesus, the man, walking through cruelty and emerging triumphant. How do we know that Jesus was triumphant? One indication is that at the end of it all, He asked God to pardon His tormentors. Are we prepared to do that yet? That will be the goal in terms of our disposition as Christians. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Not always easy. Definitely we need God’s help sometimes.

So let us talk about forgiveness, recalling that it is a room for regular work in our contemplative prayer structure. In summary, we need to arrive at a place where we can say ‘I forgive myself. I forgive others. And I am forgiven.’ This is the place of freedom. We want to live happy lives, creatively expressing God and engaging with our wounds honestly. To do that, we must admit that we’ve been hurt, often by those closest to us, and get on with life, healed and strengthened by the experiences of the cross.

Why is this so important? Well we want to communicate joy and we want to prepare for heaven painstakingly. What is heaven like? Think about it. Heaven is a place where St. Paul could die and be received joyously by St. Stephan. Why is this significant? Because St. Stephan was murdered, like Jesus, by a crowd’s frenzy of hatred and St. Paul stood by, a guilty bystander. Did St. Paul think he was guilty at the time? No. he thought he was right in persecuting the followers of Jesus Christ. And there are those who will persecute us and call it righteous. They’ll insist on their innocence, even as they commit crimes against us.

We read in Scripture John Chapter 16 verse 2…they will expel you from the synagogues, and indeed the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is doing a holy service to God. Where do we find that today? Obviously euthanasia and abortion. But also somewhere else, perhaps a little less obvious. Scientists in England have received permission to perform testing on people whom they identify as ‘left over’ embryos from a fertility clinic. These people, admittedly small, it would seem have been either surrendered or abandoned by their parents and if the research is cleared are to be martyred to what some are calling science. This was only done once before, in China last year and there was widespread outcry and protest. Critics have claimed that allowing embryos to be edited potentially opens the door to designer babies and genetically modified people. My friends, these ‘left over embryos’ are not in a position to offer themselves. They cannot give consent. That makes them victims of modern arrogance in the same way that people were victims of bizarre medical testing in concentration camps. I actually do not see the difference. The license will need research ethics approval, so we should all pray that God’s will prevails.

Well, how might God view this? I think the word grief would be important. I think our Father in heaven grieves such atrocities. And so must we. Each of these ‘left over embryos’ is part of our human family. I find myself, in response to this, recognizing these people as my brothers and sisters and taking joy in their presence on earth. I send them each great love through prayer. I thank God for every one of them and ask Him for protection on them, because we must always look out for the victims first. And for the misguided perpetrators and the courts and tribunals who may fail to arrest this process? May the Father forgive them in what we hope is their ignorance.

For this reason, the following Catechism piece is notable. CCC 1753 a good intention does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying or calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means. So….you cannot do a bad thing, even if it is in the service of a greater good.

My friends, we have to be about the business of holding ourselves accountable in a healthy manner. For example, I have known people who will not tell a lie, even a white lie, which is called white, presumably, because its motive is thought to be good. These people whom I’ve encountered, are serious about honesty. And sometimes their telling of the truth can sting. But one knows, if this person is saying a thing that it is as close to the truth as it can possibly be.

But why is forgiveness so darn hard sometimes?

First of all, we might make the mistake of saying, ‘Oh I will forgive. Sure. Just as soon as that person apologizes.’ Does that sound familiar? It should. We have all felt this way. I know I have. But given that we have limited self-awareness at times, we have to assume that others, also, possess limited self-awareness. And some people have so little self-awareness that it is a disorder. Think of the person who punches another and then complains because his fist hurts. This is true. And real. People get entangled with each other in their humanity and they simply do not know the extent of the damage they are inflicting or the extent of their personal responsibility. Saint Paul thought he was doing the right thing by letting the crowd kill St. Stephan. Hard to imagine. But it happened.

Saint Paul would probably have said at the time, Look, I didn’t make that decision. Within that culture at that time stoning was an accepted methodology for killing those condemned. So Saint Paul had an answer when someone asked him why. And maybe the people who hurt us also have answers when someone asks them why they have done wrong things to us. And you and I have answers, sometimes, for why we have done wrong things. And so the process of forgiveness is possibly a process of asking. Why might someone have done this? Have you ever heard yourself say, What were you thinking? If you are a Mom or Dad you have heard yourself say this I would guess. This is actually a good question to ask but the tone has to be right. We might say to another, Hmmm. I’m confused by your action. And I’m wondering, what were you thinking there? And we might say to ourselves, what was I thinking at the time I committed that sin? What is different about the second tone? It is kind. There is interest in the question. It is legitimately seeking an answer, not just condemning self or other. And so in the room of forgiveness in our contemplative prayer structure, as we contemplate those who have hurt us in the presence of Christ, we might wonder about why people committed bad actions against us.

I heard someone say something very beautiful once. This was a Hollywood actress. She was Irish. And she was working in New York and she left work one day and a man accosted her and sexually assaulted her. Years later, she recalled the event openly, with great freedom. She said, to paraphrase, “I never condemned the man. It was never about me or who I was, at that time or this time. He had problems. And I didn’t take it personally because that would be like me thinking that his problems were my problems. I didn’t have problems like he did. So I forgave him and got on with my life.” It was so clear that she had processed the event and integrated the crime committed against her. And she had forgiven. She had contemplated the offender with compassion, and crucially, she had distanced herself from his mental disorder.

So…that is the job at hand for us all. We won’t get through life without being injured physically, emotionally, sexually or spiritually. We want to expect to have to be resilient and recover ourselves when we get hurt. We can do it! Not to say it will always be easy, but we can recover and flourish with Christ.

And as Christians, we have to ask another question. Metaphorically speaking, where are we stoning people today and calling it righteous? In our own lives? In our workplaces? In our schools? Who is being publicly humiliated? Think of students in schools. Prisoners in prisons. Employees in the workplace. Family members in families. Or left over embryos in laboratories. It takes courage to stand down bullies. But God will give us courage when we need it. And if we are the bully? It takes humility to admit that we are playing out our wounds against other people, because we cannot or will not engage with them.

In some of these places mentioned we will encounter the concept that we are doing something ‘for someone’s own good’ or doing something to ‘toughen someone up’. Have you heard this? Many children will cite situations where they were traumatized by someone who claimed that this was their motive for hurting, humiliating or punishing the child harshly. Maybe we are guilty of this ourselves. We must all be a little guilty, really, of doing this at times. But that does not make it okay. We need to repent if we have hurt others, even if we thought we were doing the right thing at the time. That makes us less guilty but it doesn’t make the people less hurt. Right? So we try to apologize when we become aware that we’ve hurt others. Is this part of our Lenten journey?

To close, heaven is a place where Saint Paul could be welcomed by Saint Stephan in great joy. Offender and victim, simply put, rejoicing together that life has been lived and heaven achieved, the race run. Think of these two men, brothers, having a wonderful time in heaven, together. And when this idea fills you with revulsion because you do not want to think of heaven with the people who have hurt you, don’t feel badly. That’s natural. If you feel this way though, about people who may be enemies now, remember that you are considering them minus their transformation. Nobody is getting into heaven without full knowledge and full repentance. So…in a very real sense, if someone hurt you deliberately, they’ll be sorry. Let’s say that two ways. Bitterly, as in they’ll be sorry. And then we say it as Christ would say it as in, oh dear. They’ll be so sorry. Forgive them, Father.  

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