Forgiveness

Day 4: Homily: FORGIVENESS. Retreat to the FMAs, Bellefonte Outreach, Shillong.

God doesn’t look at our faults, but at the places in us that are trying to say “yes.” You do the same with your children. You see beyond the “no” to the abiding “yes.” God sees the divine image in you as you see your image in your children.

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“Offer the wicked person no resistance” (Matthew 5:39). Did Jesus really mean this? Is this teaching practical?

This is one of the pearls from the Sermon on the Mount. Here is where we can really see the crux of Jesus’ teachings. He asks us not to offer the wicked person any resistance or opposition. Jesus’ teaching is never practical, only radical. It cuts at the root (radical is from the Latin word radix = root). Jesus is not asking any cosmetic changes to the world order, in fact he is exhorting us to end this kind of world order, this kind of world itself. Jesus was not proclaiming the reform the world; he was proclaiming the end of the world. Jesus is not presenting a new program for human society. He refuses to accept society on its own terms; he refuses to offer it allegiance as it is.

Wicked persons like Queen Jezebel (see the First Reading of 18 June, 2018, 1 Kings 21:1-16) or Hitler or Stalin (or anyone whom you think wicked) were all created in God’s image. They too are God’s children, God’s Beloved. Jesus continues his radical statements (almost impractical!): “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons and daughters of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” (Matthew 5:44-46).

Jesus is asking me not only not to hate, but to love these wicked persons. To love all those who trouble and persecute you: all the fundamentalist and fringe elements in the country, terrorists, murderers, rapists, abusers, criminals, scoundrels, and all others. This is where one takes her call to be a Christian or no. (I’m talking of reality, not namesake Christianity here.) A true follower is asked to do the impossible!

Jesus forgives his murderers on the cross. When it is most difficult. He forgives even the unrepentant thief. (Otherwise Jesus won’t be our model.) He forgives the Jews and the Romans, but more importantly he forgives his own disciples, his own friends. After resurrection too: “Peace be with you.” No stories, no hurts, only peace = only forgiveness. For Jesus too it would have been (comparatively) easier to forgive others - Romans, then Jews. But then to forgive his own disciples, that was not easy; yet he did it.

Maybe easy (comparatively) to forgive the military regime/fundamentalist government.... we may expect them to be cruel, so easier to forgive. Easy to forgive “our” Jews and Romans. But to forgive my own dear ones in the family or forgive my own sisters in the community, that is not easy. We may even think: I have done so much for this sister, but she has done this or that to me, she has done this or that harm to me. Time and again this or that sister is disobedient, rebellious, even unfaithful to her vows. To forgive her is certainly difficult, almost impossible. Yet this is exactly what we are called to do: Forgive her from the heart. Forgive her again and again. Forgive everything, everyone, every time. That’s a tall order! Not seven times, but seventy times seven. An incredibly (almost) impossible tall order! Very difficult to forgive.

The list is endless: My abusive or alcoholic parents, my greedy siblings and relatives, my dominating superiors, my nagging friends and companions, my imperfect community members, my insensitive and complaining (grumbling) sisters, my impious parishioners, my fault-finding neighbours, the rebellious faithful, the disobedient youth and children under my care, my parochial and racist thinking country men and women, my own narrow-minded tribal community, my own fanatic cultural group, the violent terrorists and groups around in the state, the greedy and manipulating politicians and bureaucrats, and the list is unending. I am called to forgive all of them from my heart. Indeed, a very difficult task!

Do we know what is even harder to forgive? It is often the petty things, the accumulating resentments. The little things we know about another person; how they sort of did us wrong yesterday. Though they may not be serious issues but the ego loves to grab onto those; they build up on the psyche like a repetitive stress injury. I think that in many ways, it is much harder to let go of these micro-offenses, precisely because they are so tiny. And so we unconsciously hoard them, and they clog us up.

Perhaps by starting to forgive, I can battle my own hypocritical behaviours. I can start practising what I preach every day. When I start doing this, I realise that I am not loving very well. I am meeting only my needs, which is nothing but “co-dependency.” This kind of love is impure and self-seeking. Perhaps a lot of what we call love today is not love at all.

Loving and forgiving: they are practically the same. To love others is to forgive others. Jesus does not merely preach on forgiveness and loving our enemies, but he demonstrates it even when it is most difficult, even while dying. We need to die to our false selves, to our egos, if we wish to love others, if we wish to forgive others.

Forgiveness is the name of love that is practised among imperfect people like us. Jesus tells of the woman who was a sinner, who washed his feet with tears: “She loved much.... she is forgiven much.” Love and forgiveness go hand in hand.

To live and experience the forgiveness of God. This is important. Unless I experience the mercy and forgiveness of the Lord I will not be able to transfer or do the same to my fellow beings. This is clear in the parable, where that wicked servant though he was forgiven, he is not ready to do the same. He has not experienced the forgiveness. The parable is very logical. But still that servant does not do it. Same with us.

Forgiveness is central to the Lord’s prayer. It seems to be a condition... A conditional clause. Receiving forgiveness (subjectively… God always forgives) and offering forgiveness are one and the same thing. Repentance is about giving your forgiveness to others like you; and at that moment of giving you also receive.

Two-thirds of Jesus’ teaching is directly or indirectly about forgiveness!

To forgive, you have to be able to see the other person—at least momentarily—as a whole person, as an image of the Divine, containing holiness and horror at the same time. In other words, you can’t eliminate the negative. You know they’ve hurt you. You know they did something wrong. You have to learn to live well with paradox, or you can’t forgive. Forgiveness accepts the dark past with an attitude of gratefulness. It can accept contradictions and darkness that we have encountered in our lives.

But you can forgive only when you yourself have experienced mercy, when you yourself have experienced forgiveness from the Lord (when you are continuously experiencing his touch of forgiveness).

God loves you precisely in your obstinate sinfulness, when you’re still a mixture of good and bad, holiness and horror, when you’re gloriously in flux. You’re not a perfectly loving person, and God still totally loves you. When I can stand under the waterfall of infinite mercy and know that I am loved precisely in my unworthiness and sinfulness, then I can pass along mercy to you.

God cannot stop loving you. That’s why no amount of effort will make God love you any more than He loves you right now. And despite your best efforts to be terrible, you can’t make God love you any less than He loves you right now.

God cannot not see his Son Jesus in you. You are the body of Christ. You are bone of God’s bone.

We love by letting go. We forgive by letting go.

Forgiveness depends on how you see. To see like Jesus sees. Everything is holy, for those who have learned how to see. Everything is a miracle if only we train our eyes to see.

Dying to our own selfish agendas, and then rising to new life. This is the meaning of forgiveness: Nothing is lost, it is only transformed. God will turn all our human crucifixions into resurrection. We need to die many times before we finally, physically die.

God will even use our various deaths in our favour, if we will allow it. God’s mercy is so infinite and resourceful that God uses even our sins and failures and unfaithfulness for our own redemption. The failures, emptiness, negativity, acts of resistance, sinfulness, weaknesses and fragility that we encounter in our daily lives end up being the very force and motivation that drives us ahead.

Death is not a loss. We pray from the Preface of the Mass for the Dead: Life is not ended, but merely changed. Nothing is ever lost, everything is transformed. Nothing that we love is ever lost, everything is transformed. No person whom we loved is lost, they are resurrected. That’s why we need to die to our egos, our false selves, our selfishness. Let us let go of our ego, of our envy, greed, violence, anger, self-satisifaction. The cross is not the price that Jesus had to pay in order to convince God into loving us. No. It is rather simply where love will lead us. To love is to die. To love or to forgive is to let go, to forego of our own wills and wishes. If we love, if we give ourselves to feel the pain of the world, it will crucify us. Some kind of suffering is always the price and proof of love.

Let go, let God.

Let love happen. Love is just like prayer; it is not so much an action that we do but a reality that we already are. We do not decide to “be loving,” but allow our true nature of love to flow from within us.

The love within us—which is the Holy Spirit in us—always somehow says yes. Love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self. Love is where you came from and love is where you are going. It is not something you can buy. It is not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated grace.

Love consists in this—not limiting God by our human equations of love, but allowing God’s infinite love to utterly redefine our own.

Lucy’s words, “I will teach my child only one thing: love. This child, born of violence, will be a witness along with me that the only greatness that gives honour to a human being is forgiveness.” Teach your children/youth only one thing: love, which is also called forgiveness.