2nd Sunday of Easter A - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2014

I was watching ABC News the other night when Rosie Batty, the mother of Luke [who was killed some weeks back by his mentally sick father], was interviewed about a project she is getting underway to raise the profile within the general community of the reality of domestic violence. She impresses me, that woman. I remember viewing her on TV the night after her son’s murder. She was profoundly grieving, yet she seemed to me to show a genuine compassion for her former husband, the murderer, insisting that he was mentally ill. So different from what we more often see - people demanding revenge and baying for blood.

Forgiveness is a tricky business.  It is often confused with excusing.  By all means excuse when excusing is called for. But forgiveness essentially deals with what cannot be excused. It certainly is not a case of “Forget it and get on with it”. It cannot be automatic or quick. A number of other things have to be addressed first.

People have to allow themselves to feel the hurt.  That can be frightening, and perhaps for some impossible.  The hurt can touch into raw areas that are so deep and painful that the psyche is not strong enough to handle it. I think that people need to be somehow confident of their personal worth and identity – they need to know they are loved – before it is safe for them to look at the hurt and to accept it. They may need deliberately to go down the road of inner healing before ever they approach the challenge of forgiving; and sometimes they may even need professional help. If they don’t, they can fall into the trap of seeing themselves as victims and martyrs, and wallowing in that, instead of recognising their true worth and learning to love themselves.

Where there is hurt, inevitably there is anger, and sometimes fear. Both need to be noticed, owned and respected. Both are important energy sources.  If they are not noticed, owned and respected, they can easily degenerate into bitterness and hatred, and become destructive. But when properly understood and integrated, they can energise constructive action for change. Rosie Batty’s involvement in raising the profile of domestic violence is a wonderful illustration of harnessing the energies of anger and fear constructively.

And forgiveness? I think Rosie may already have moved there. Forgiveness involves surrendering the need for revenge. But it involves more than that. Without excusing the deed, hiding from the hurt, or denying the fear and anger, forgiveness moves towards eventual inner peace by letting go, too, of resentment. Reconciliation may even become possible; but for that, there is need for genuine sorrow on the part of the offender.

The risen Jesus is the perfect exemplar of what is possible.  Peace be with you!

And he sent us disciples on mission to show the possibility to the world   Us disciples! who are such babes-in-the-woods in this whole process of forgiveness.  Yet, essentially, that is what the Church is about. Love your enemies translates as “Forgive those who hurt you”.  We know so little about it, most of us. We struggle to put it into practice. We don’t know how to help each other.

We spend half our life pretending we don’t sin, pretending we don’t hurt others, pretending we don’t judge. Often we are defensive or into avoidance. We can’t admit our sin, our offences, to ourselves, much less to each other, if we don’t live in a community that clearly defines itself as a community of sinners, who are learning, prioritising and wanting to forgive. Face it! I’m a sinner! You’re all sinners! But let us equally balance our sin by taking on, wounded and all as we are, the mission given us by the risen Christ to exemplify and to offer forgiveness to ourselves, to each other and to our world. The Church is essentially a band of wounded healers; and we need to be clear about both, our woundedness and our empowerment by God’s Spirit to heal – to heal through love and forgiveness.