Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC
Epiphany 7 C - Sunday, February 20, 2022
“Love your enemies.” To love our enemies, we must forgive them. And that is one of the theme of our lectionary readings today- forgiveness. In the reading from the Book of Genesis, Joseph forgives his older brothers for sending him into a lifetime of hardship: “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes about “seeds” that must die before new life can emerge. Those seeds surely include our resentments and wounds. We sow these “bare” and perishable seeds into the ground, and consent to “die” to everything that hinders new life, and trust that God will raise our dishonor and weakness into glory and power.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus continues his “Sermon on the Plain”: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.” And again: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”
How do we even begin to live up to this call without compromising our psychological and emotional well-being? I think the key is to have a very clear understanding of what forgiveness is, and what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not pretending that an offense doesn't matter, or that a wound doesn't hurt. Healing from a wound often takes time, and while forgiveness can be a one-way street, reconciliation is not. The reconciliation one may hope for after forgiving may not be possible.
When I was thirteen years old, my alcoholic uncle (one of them) came into our home drunk, and got into an argument with my mother (who wanted him to leave). He became more and more agitated until, in my presence, he punched my mother in the face. I grabbed the biggest knife in our kitchen, and pointing it at him, backed him out of the house, telling him that if he didn’t leave, I would kill him. I spent many years feeling angry and resentful toward my uncle. That anger and resentment didn’t change him, but it affected me deeply in many areas of my life. By the grace of God, through my own conversion (and plenty of psychotherapy!) I was finally able to forgive him. I had to let go of my anger toward my uncle. I had to leave that scene that kept repeating in my head in the past and be done with it. I even wished the best for my uncle and prayed for him, that he would get sober, but because he never did, reconciliation was not possible. I didn’t want him in my life. I knew that having him in my life while still a drunk would have kept me connected to that horrible, violent scene I witnessed against my mother when I was thirteen. It would have compromised my psychological and emotional well-being. Sometimes we must sever ties with our offenders, even if we have forgiven them. Forgiveness is not cheap.
Forgiveness is also a process that is often messy. And no one who struggles to forgive for reasons of temperament, circumstance, or trauma should feel or should be made to feel that they're less holy, spiritual, or good than those who don't struggle with the whole process of forgiveness. Let us remember that in the Hebrew Scripture story, Joseph wrestles with a strong desire to scare and shame his brothers, and actually does, before he finally, slowly and painfully comes to the point that he can forgive them. Forgiveness can sometimes feel like going up a spiral staircase, circling and circling in order to create distance between the pain we’ve suffered and the new life we seek.
But we must arrive at forgiveness, for our own sake. There is a well-known saying with many versions, attributed to many people from Saint Augustine and the Buddha to Nelson Mandela and Anne Lamott, so who knows who really said it or wrote it, but the version I know goes like this: “Holding onto a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” If I'm consumed with my own pain, if I insist on making my well-deserved resentment into a weapon that I use in every interaction I have with the person who hurt me, then I'm drinking poison, and the poison is killing me, not the person who wronged me. To choose forgiveness is to release myself from the tyranny of bitterness, and to refuse the lie that revenge is sweet. After all, we all know that what’s sweet is not necessarily good for us.
In the words of Maya Angelou: “Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment.” “I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'"
The act that hurt us might always be with us, but forgiveness can lessen its grip on us and help free us from the control of the person who harmed us. Forgiveness can even lead to feelings of empathy and compassion for the one who hurt us. It can lead us to see the better self of that person that God created them to be, even if they themselves are not able to find it.
So the work of forgiveness is some of the hardest and, also, some of the most important work we can do for ourselves and for the world. May we taste the full measure of the freedom that awaits us when we choose to forgive. ¡Que así sea, en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo!
Amen+
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