Monday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Like all of us, I have had my share of opportunities to forgive others in my life. I have also given the people in my life plenty of opportunities to forgive me! But I always find today’s Gospel reading particularly challenging. How often and when am I expected to forgive? Jesus essentially tells me I must always forgive. Jesus tells me to choose the way of inner peace and freedom.
If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him.” I have experienced resentment and I have experienced forgiveness in my life. The former was my own doing and the latter I can only attribute to the grace of God. Resentment resulted in untold pain and a deep sense of alienation—from God and others in my life. Forgiveness granted me a sense of release and freedom and inner peace I never knew possible. How peculiar, down the road, that I would instinctively regress to using my own resources to deal with a harm done against me! Will I ever learn how limited I am?
All my justifications and rationalizations are but rubbish when I consider the teachings of Jesus. When Jesus says I must forgive, Jesus means exactly what he says. I may experience or witness that which is unforgiveable (child abuse, spousal abuse, infidelity, murder, etc.), but Jesus’ words stand. I have see this day such power and wisdom in Jesus. The Jesus I talk so much about, the Jesus I try so hard to follow, the Jesus whose perfection so escapes my human comprehension, knows what lies on the other side of forgiveness. Jesus has even demonstrated what lies on the other side of forgiveness. And still I do not seem to comprehend. I still follow my human instincts and follow my feelings all the way to a place of misery. The only person who can reveal to me how and why I cling to the lesser way down a road to bondage and bitterness and slavery is Jesus. This day, may I turn to Jesus and plead for the willingness and surrender that is necessary to follow him to freedom and openness and inner peace. Even if I am not aware that I harbor ill will towards another person, Jesus can reveal this to me. Jesus will show me the way to greater freedom. I pray, as St. Paul in today’s first reading, that I be a slave of God and cleave to Jesus. I pray I choose His way, the way of inner peace and freedom.
--Gail Lyman