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“Let no man bring you down so low that you hate him.” That’s a quote from Martin Luther King. Let me re-phrase that: Let no woman bring you down so low that you hate her.
That’s an insight into what happens to us when we hold on to hatred. Forget about the other person. We’re usually moved by our own personal motives. Hatred destroys us. Unforgiveness, too. Vengeance. And desire for vengeance. The desire to be God is what I see that it amounts to. To be the one who’s in control.
I would like to present to you three little stories.
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1) The first story is from Belfast during the time of the Troubles, a time when there was a lot of violence between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
A young father was on the way to Mass with his family when he was killed by Protestant gunmen.
Later on, some time after the funeral, his wife was praying with her children. Little Gavin–I’m not sure how old he was—asked his mom, “Will the men who killed Daddy go to heaven?”
She said, “If they ask for Jesus’ forgiveness, yes, they’ll go to heaven.”
He said, “Well, I don’t want to go to heaven.”
She had to think about that. She prayed about it, and then she said, “If Jesus forgives them and sets them free and if they receive that forgiveness from Jesus, they will be changed. They will become different people.”
Gavin said, “Well then, let’s pray for them to be free.”
It’s a wonderful thing to begin early in life to learn about forgiveness.
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Often, we can’t forgive but we can say, “Lord, I want to forgive.” And if we don’t want to forgive, we can say, “Lord, I want to want to forgive.”
Forgiveness is a grace, and despite the fact that it’s so essential a thing in the Christian life, it’s one of the hardest things for us to do. But it’s also the most rewarding.
It’s simply charity—God’s love. Why wouldn’t we want it?
Well, we can think of lots of reasons why we don’t want it, but we need it. It changes us; changes our visage, our face, our bearing, our interactions, our relationships. It changes our whole life or if we don’t forgive, it changes us the other way—makes us crabby, bent, bitter.
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2) Second story: I was serving in our house in the Yukon, looking after the shelter we had for men who needed it for a week or a month or a few days. A lot of men passed through those doors. Some were very rough, very broken.
I remember one day being out in the yard in the summertime, and this fellow came up to me—a good-looking man—and he said, “I want to ask your forgiveness.”
I said, “For what?” I didn’t recognize him.
“I was here a year ago, a year and a half ago. Maybe you don’t remember me.”
I said, “No, I don’t remember you.”
He said, “I did this and this and this.”
I said, “Yes, I remember you. I forgive you.”
He was doing one of the steps in the Alcoholics Anonymous program, going around to as many people as he could remember whom he had offended and asking for forgiveness.
The reason I remember that story so well is that he was a changed man. I didn’t recognize him immediately because he didn’t look the same. He was no longer hard and vicious-looking, he was not guarded and suspicious. He was open. He had lost lines in his face. That’s what grace does to us. But it takes time.
***
It takes time as my next story will illustrate.
Forgiveness and unforgiveness, vengeance and the desire for vengeance, are everywhere. Even here in Madonna House. Even in Madonna House we have to be on guard and be ready to work on it and work on it.
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3) Third story. One of my friends here at Madonna House, one of my brothers, told me this story about his journey of forgiveness with another person, a woman in this community.
They didn’t like one another. And as God would have it, they lived in the same mission house for some years, and they avoided each other as much as they could within that small community.
They would go to liturgies together—they had to—but they wouldn’t sit at the same table unless they really had to.
Their dislike of one another was mutual. It came to the point where if one of them came to the chapel and saw the other one there praying, he or she would leave.
But something must have begun to sink in after a period of time. Maybe it was just stubbornness, or a sense that, well, darn it all, I’m not going to stop praying just because he/she is here. Grace sneaks in. And over a period of time, something started to go away.
After a while, when he walked into the chapel and saw her there, he went in anyhow and started praying for her. Perhaps she was doing the same thing. At least, she stopped leaving when she saw him.
This all happened over a period of years. This was two people consecrated to living and preaching the Gospel without compromise. Struggling with one another, hating one another at times, and tolerating one another until, gradually over a period of time, they began to soften towards one another.
When you start praying for someone you dislike, you are on the losing side. God will take over.
One day, as circumstances and God’s providence would have it, they suddenly found themselves standing together in the middle of one of our picnics. There was no one else around, just the two of them.
He made a comment about something beautiful. She looked at him astounded. “You notice that kind of thing?
“I do,” he said, “and what do you think of it?” Things changed with that exchange. At that moment, a beautiful relationship began. They started to love one another.
But even then, it took time. For some time, they were dragged down by one another, to the extent that they started to hate, well maybe not quite hate.
But they found new life by persevering, by wanting to want to have things between them change. And that changed to wanting to. And then the Lord could really do something.
***
So don’t be afraid. Be patient. And work at it. It is work. It’s hard work. But it’s the best work. And just as we get over it with one person, we find someone else that we have to work things through with. And that’s OK. It’s not always as hard as it was in this story.
But it always brings good. It always brings good, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, more than we expected to have in our lap so that we can share it with others.
The icon that has become for me the icon of forgiveness, of charity, is the Descent into Hades—Jesus Christ right after the Resurrection going down into hell and pulling out Adam and Eve.
When did Christ decide to go there? As St. Paul says, Christ died for us while we were sinners (Romans 5:8). He didn’t wait for Adam and Eve to finally come to their senses.
He comes to us, too, and he asks us to come to others before they come to their senses, before they come to us. Maybe we have to pray, “I want to want to do that.” The grace we need is there, and it will bring us more than we could ask for or imagine.
