Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'A'

Friday September 9, 2005

Untying the Knots

Still under the cloud of 9/11 and reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, caught in the red tape of war and bureaucratic red tape of rescue, recovery and discovery, where in God’s name do preachers go with these texts? Whom do we need to forgive and what does the preacher say to people seemingly forsaken by God? Perhaps it would be better not to preach at all.

I suppose that is an option. However, I think preachers would be negligent to shrink from the awesome responsibility, risky though it may be, to venture into the minefield of these texts. But the preacher best begin with a prayer for wisdom and then for courage to embrace the impossible.

As I read and re-read the scriptures, searching for a loophole or a way out of a literal interpretation, I turned to scripture scholars and commentaries to find meaning but they all seemed too scholastic and detached from reality. They deal with historical events and epochs long past and have used dated stories and anecdotes that in the face of current events are not very helpful to comfort hearts still hurting from vicious terrorist attacks or spirits bruised by the ravages natural disaster—complicated by the squabbling of politicians and sidewalk pundits assigning blame before the facts are in.

Unresolved anger does not dissipate but festers into weapons of mass destruction, the most destructive of which is the human tongue.

In the midst of still burning embers at the base of steel towers and steeped in the raw sludge of wasted neighborhoods we tune into the Word and back to the source, to voices of the past to allow them to speak for themselves, as it were, within the matrix of many stories and sayings forming a kaleidoscope of divine wisdom so clearly manifest in the life of Jesus.

In his now dated book, Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom shared conversations with his favorite professor, Morrie Schwartz during what they would call his “last class” – the last fourteen Tuesdays of Morrie’s days on earth.

There were tears and laughter as they conversed about love, work, marriage, community, aging, etc.

During their twelfth meeting, they spoke of forgiveness. “Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.” became his mantra.

Forgiveness has to do with the untying of a knot in our spiritual circulatory system that connects us to God. Until our blood flows freely into and out of the heart of God, we will be ‘in knots’ and the blockage will ultimately destroy us. I suppose this is what psychologists call destructive anger that eats away at our immune system until we can no longer breathe in the rhythm of God’s spirit.

Forgiveness is not a political solution or a legal settlement. It goes beyond tough love to hard-nosed compassion. It takes place within a complex matrix of mind and heart within the mix of truth and justice and dialogue in which we listen as well as speak. It is a never-ending process reinforced by the deep down desire to be at peace with God and neighbor. It is always a heartbeat away but because of the excess baggage that all of us carry, it is always illusive and frequently beyond our grasp.

But whom are we challenged to forgive?

In as much as ‘charity begins at home’ I suppose we can start with ourselves. This may be the greatest challenge of all.

There is a short phrase that I have printed more times than I can count on my ‘magic board’ for the children of St. Joseph Parish: “Good people make mistakes but good people say they are sorry and keep trying to do their very best.”

We can never condone evil and nor overlook wrongdoing but there will be mercy for the sinner.

Perhaps the best we can do at any particular moment is live in the consciousness of God’s mercy.

Many books have been written on “forgiveness” but Henri Nouen’s short tome, “The Inner Voice of Love” speaks to the longing of the heart for wholeness, which is the reservoir of ultimate forgiveness.

This is what he wrote:

“There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes.

Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it. There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.” [‘The Inner Voice of Love’ H Nouen, Doubleday, 1996]

And on conversion, he wrote:

“You are called to live out of a new place, beyond your emotions, passions, and feelings. As long as you live amid your emotions, passions and feelings, you will continue to experience loneliness, jealousy, anger, resentment, and even rage, because those are the most obvious responses to rejection and abandonment.

You have to trust that there is another place, to which your spiritual guides want to lead you and where you can be safe… Try thinking about this place as the core of your being in your heart, where all human sentiments are held together in truth. From this place you can feel, think and act truthfully” and I would add, freely.

Forgiveness is neither the denial the truth nor the absence of justice and it is certainly not just an act of the will. It is a commitment of a long process the end of which does not absolve the sinner from the admission of guilt or the acceptance of just punishment. I’m sorry ‘if I may have offended you.’ is not sufficient.

However, forgiveness looks beyond guilt and punishment to ultimate reconciliation with God who makes all things work together for the good of those who have called.

I suspect that those who risked their lives on 9/11 and those who are doing the same in the wake of Katrina understand better than most the mystery of divine wisdom spoken by Sirach, Paul and Jesus.

My name is not Morrie and I’m not there yet, but I think I’d better get moving in that direction. There’s not much time left.

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