A Year of Forgiveness

Deacon Michael had quite an assortment of friends, and he loved them all. Many of them did not share his opinion on a great many very important issues. He was very tolerant of the differences; he just enjoyed the people he loved.

In his ordinary life, if someone did something that annoyed him, he had to either resolve the situation or overlook it and get on with the business of living. He did not wallow in resentment.

Forgiveness is too important to not embrace it. We cannot let anger poison our lives.

The great thing about being a Catholic is that our faith spreads out its arms and embraces life with gusto! When Catholics celebrate we don't hide behind dark dress and stiff faces. We, like David, dance and shout and sing out our love for God, His saints, and each other. That's hard to do if you cling to resentment.

Once again in this sermons Deacon Michael uses the names of particular people who were at the communion service. This was a sign of his love for them.

written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:
We have an example of the need for forgiveness and it's in the press frequently today. There is this group, ISIS, or ISIL or whatever, in Syria, where they are fanatical people. If we had gone into their areas when they were at their forefront we would have been killed. You don't go around claiming yourself Catholic in certain parts of that world. They would have just killed us.

But there is this number of women, who, from other countries, Britain, various places in Europe, decided that they wanted to become part of ISIS. They wanted to fight against the western heathens, the infidels. And they, in fact, did so, and many of them got married. And they stayed with ISIS until the very end.

And now there is a group, there is a camp of them, of these women who left their countries to join ISIS, to fight with ISIS, got married, have children, and now they are saying, "I want to go home!"

What do we do? Do we forgive them?

When my brother sins against me… I don't have a brother, so… when my sister sins against me, do I forgive her? Or do I nurture in my heart, this little, "Ooo, I just can't forgive her. It was so bad, what she did, I can't forgive her." Do we allow ourselves to nurture within us these little grudges, these little inabilities to forgive, these little things, that just, "Ooo, I just can't forgive her."?

And in the readings today we see, in the first reading… Wisdom changed the location of the ribbons, confused me.. in the first reading we see one of the three young men that are in the fiery furnace extolling God but talking about the horrible conditions they face, and still placing their faith in God. Having faith in God and understanding the totality of the necessity of faith in God.

And the responsorial, "Remember your mercies, O Lord. Remember your mercies, O Lord." Remember Lord, that you are merciful when you are judging me. Remember that I am merely human. I cannot be perfect in your sight. And that when it comes to time of judgement, I need you to be merciful. Because otherwise, I ain't gonna make it! It's just not gonna happen unless you're merciful.

And Jesus, what does he do? He gives us the Our Father. We're going to be reciting it. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

We see, at the end of the reading today, "so will my heavenly Father do to you unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart."

Jesus links our ability to be forgive our brother, sister, everyone, to our own salvation. Whether it is simply on a personal level: "I've got to learn how to forgive Michael. Michael, you don't know it but he is just the opposite of everything that he shows externally; he is just a really mean guy. I've just got to figure out how to forgive him, because if I don't, God's not gonna forgive me."

But look at these young women. If your daughter, Beth, had gone off and said, "I'm joining ISIS, and by the way I'll find a real nice man. You can't believe the way he works a machine gun and plows people down. And he's just done all these horrible things. But I love him!" And then she comes back and says, "Mom, forgive me! Wahh!"

What do we do?

And Jesus says to us we have to forgive. Because ultimately what it comes down to is that when we look at our lives, and we look to try to bring ourselves to a way that is pleasing to God, He is not asking us to be really good in our humanity. He doesn't come and say, "Robert, you're a real nice guy, that's enough. I know that you're human. That's the limitation."
He wants us to become like Him. Because if we go to Heaven, maybe I should use the word, when we go to Heaven, naw, I'll use the other, if we go to Heaven, we want to participate in the divinity of God. We want to be like Him. To participate in the love of Heaven. And to do that, we have to change ourselves on Earth. We have to learn to be like God.

And what does God do? God gives His only-begotten Son who dies on the cross for us, takes upon Himself all our sins, so God can be in a position to forgive us.

And we are called, as this very explicitly says, "How many times do I have to forgive?" Now Jesus says seventy-seven times but there actually is some symbolic number that seventy-seven relates to, because what He is really saying is, "every time".

Don't count up and say, "Okay, that was seventy-seven. I don't have to forgive him any more.” That's not what Jesus is saying. He's saying, "Every time, we have to forgive." And every time, in forgiving, we come closer to God. And we have to aspire to do exactly that, and to remember, again, we're going to have the Our Father in just a little bit, we are called to forgive those who trespass against us so God can forgive us. The two are linked.

And so in this season of Lent, part of what we have to do is to find those little grudges, those things where have haven't been able to forgive. You know, I remember, as a child, one time one of my friends took my favorite marble, and I'm still upset with him. Well the reality is, get over it. Forgive him. That's what we are called to do.

And it's not easy. Jesus didn't pick the word, "brother", accidentally. Because it's the hardest thing to do is to forgive those who are closest to us: our family, our friends, the people in our community. Those are many times the hardest ones to forgive, but those are the ones that we most have to forgive because those are the ones that God can say, "Well, what about..." And you go, "Well...he was a special circumstance. You don't know..." God says, "Yes, I do. And what did I tell you? Forgive."

March 26, 2019 2