A Few Thoughts on Forgiveness and Grace: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Brian Muha was brutally slain in Steubenville with his friend Aaron Land in 1999. We were living there at the time and everyone had their eyes on Mrs Muha because from the first moment the story broke - when the boys were still only missing - she called on everyone to forgive those responsible. The amazing thing is that her resolve to forgive was tested when the boys were found shot to death. She did not disappoint us because she went forward, even testifying on the murders behalf to prevent them from getting the death penalty. When she spoke the young men responsible for the murders she said, "my son is now your best friend." She was referring to the fact that the murdered boys would now be praying for the soul of these guys.

Mary at Broken Alabaster has written a moving piece about forgiveness. Please do go read it now before continuing.

She mentions my prayers for the souls of my friend's murderers as a good example. As my promptings in this are have been entirely the result of Christ's grace I felt extremely unworthy to be mentioned.

However, it did make me stop and think back to why I would begin praying for the souls of those persecuting my friend when I first heard of it, before she was killed.

It is because Christ has been working on my heart through the examples of saints and friends. In short, it is because of his workings through the Body of Christ.

I remember distinctly the impression that my gentle, kind friend Norma made immediately after the Twin Towers were destroyed on Sept. 11. I was ranting about vengeance against the terrorists and she didn't say anything but had a troubled look on her face. That look made me stop and examine my own instincts as compared to the example set by Christ.

Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

As distasteful as it was, I had to stop and pray for forgiveness for the terrorists' souls. I did not want to but Norma's example pointed out the right path.

I remember Kathy L's witness during the CRHP retreat I attended. It was instrumental in breaking open my heart for the main reason I was supposed to be there. That reason was forgiveness of certain people. After I faced that reality and took it to confession, I was set free to be so much more of the person that God created me to be.

I remember being interviewed for a jury that was going to consider the death penalty for a confessed murderer. My head said that I was not in favor of the death penalty because of Pope John Paul II's writings on the subject. However, that was the gloss over what my heart had always felt, that the death penalty, an eye for an eye, was the right and proper punishment for murderers. That trial was the impetus that made me realize my inconsistencies and turned me, in part, toward St. Maria Goretti who forgave her murderer upon her deathbed. It made me look at Alessandro Serenelli, her killer, who in old age wrote:

"I'm nearly 80 years old. I'm about to depart.

"Looking back at my past, I can see that in my early youth, I chose a bad path which led me to ruin myself.

"My behavior was influenced by print, mass-media and bad examples which are followed by the majority of young people without even thinking. And I did the same. I was not worried.

"There were a lot of generous and devoted people who surrounded me, but I paid no attention to them because a violent force blinded me and pushed me toward a wrong way of life.

"When I was 20 years-old, I committed a crime of passion. Now, that memory represents something horrible for me. Maria Goretti, now a Saint, was my good Angel, sent to me through Providence to guide and save me. I still have impressed upon my heart her words of rebuke and of pardon. She prayed for me, she interceded for her murderer. Thirty years of prison followed.

"If I had been of age, I would have spent all my life in prison. I accepted to be condemned because it was my own fault.

"Little Maria was really my light, my protectress; with her help, I behaved well during the 27 years of prison and tried to live honestly when I was again accepted among the members of society. The Brothers of St. Francis, Capuchins from Marche, welcomed me with angelic charity into their monastery as a brother, not as a servant. I've been living with their community for 24 years, and now I am serenely waiting to witness the vision of God, to hug my loved ones again, and to be next to my Guardian Angel and her dear mother, Assunta.

"I hope this letter that I wrote can teach others the happy lesson of avoiding evil and of always following the right path, like little children. I feel that religion with its precepts is not something we can live without, but rather it is the real comfort, the real strength in life and the only safe way in every circumstance, even the most painful ones of life."

Signature, Alessandro Serenelli

(This subject was further expounded upon by Mark Windsor after my friend's murder and I urge you to read his reflections upon evil and our response to it, if you have not already.)

Then I had the immediate example of Immaculee Ilibagiza, with her gentle voice echoing in my ears, about the grace of Jesus allowing her to look into the eyes of killers from the Rwandan genocides and think of the good people they were way down deep, to wonder what happened to them to twist them into such evil. That was quickly followed by young Namrata Nayak's story of forgiving Hindu extremists who bombed her home hoping to kill Christians. (You can find the post with their stories and links here.)

The examples were flooding upon me, though I did not notice their significance at the time. However, at that time was when I heard of my friend's persecution and I began praying for the souls of everyone involved. Everyone.

Immediately following the terrible news, I had the example of a mutual friend, Kathy L (yes the same one from the retreat), who regularly spent much more time with my friend than I had for some time. When a few of us who could get away in the middle of the day met at the church to grieve together, one of the first things out of her mouth was that we must not forget to pray for the murderers. She said, "We are all born with the same innocent souls. What happens to change some people so much?"

This was not a new thought to me by this time but it did embolden me to speak up to encourage friends to at least be willing to ask God for the "willingness to pray for forgiveness."

Now you can see why, upon reading Mary's article, I could see how carefully I was prepared to receive Christ's grace in praying for the souls of the murderers. In a way, it has been a salutory example of how our sins and virtues affect the entire Body of Christ. Without those virtues so clearly on display, I would not have been prepared to be open to praying for those who know not what they did.

In Mary's article, I see yet another example.

"my son is now your best friend."

I have not mentioned that St. Maria Goretti is not the only person I have been asking to pray for everyone involved. I also have turned to Alessandro Serenelli. Who better to intercede for both the victims and the unwilling recipients who committed the crimes?

As well, I think of my friend, Cyndie, who said, "Jeanmarie is in heaven. We have to put her to work." Cyndie was speaking of asking Jeanmarie to pray for Frank, for whom our hearts are breaking. I had not yet taken that final step of thinking of asking her prayers for her killers. Yet again, however, a member of the Body of Christ takes me another step down the road.

St. Maria Goretti,
Alessandro Serenelli,
Jeanmarie, Matthew, and Sydney ...
pray for us.

We pray for strength and peace for Frank and all those who are grieving.
For the souls of their murderers, that the Hounds of Heaven may chase them down and cause a conversion of heart.

Amen.

I began this by saying that I was unworthy to be mentioned in Mary's piece. True indeed. However, we are all unworthy. If God can use an extremely unworthy example for moving others to a place of realizing the power of forgiveness ... then so be it. I am his to use as he will. It is all his grace.

Ted Kennedy, the Our Father, and Me

A friend confessed to me that her dithering about praying for Kennedy has forced some introspection - the good old Catholic notion of “examining the conscience” forced her to look at where she was lacking. But of course, taking the time to make that examination, and to locate her fault, helped her to move past it and to find herself both willing and able to pray for Kennedy and for his family. It is funny how locating our own beams make it easier to look past other’s splinters.

The Anchoress and I were exchanging emails this morning and, while I may not have been the only one, my email is well represented by her in the above excerpt. She has a very good piece examining the reactions she has heard to Kennedy's illness and you should go read the whole thing.

I was shocked (shocked!) at myself this morning when realizing that my reaction upon reading about Ted Kennedy's brain tumor was a distinct disinclination to pray for him. Certainly not publicly! Why people might think that I agree with him politically. How startling to realize that this man's personal tragedy was solely looked at from the context of me, Me, ME!

How humbling. Or it should have been. I merely was ashamed and then went to pray. Did I remember to pray for Teddy? Nope. I had forgotten about it. (Ahem ... I mentioned it's all about me, didn't I?)

I must pause here to add an aside that Bringing the Gospel of Matthew to Life has been living up to my hopes and expectations. I have not been allowing myself to read it at any other time than as a sort of lectio divina (sacred reading) in the morning. As a result, where I once dutifully went to prayer time, I now eagerly "take up and read" a section and then ponder it with the intention of letting God guide me.

Appropriately, this morning, I was finishing up the commentary on Matthew 6:9-15, the Our Father, or Lord's Prayer. Specifically, the bit on forgiveness.

12 and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. If read outside of the context of the Lord's Prayer, the language of this petition sounds like something we might say in court to a bankruptcy judge: please forgive all that I owe, as I am forgiving what is owed me. But in Aramaic, the word debts was also used for sins; our sins create, as it were, a debt we owe God--damages owed to him. We pray that God will forgive us what we owe him, just as we forgive those who have harmed us and owe us recompense....

14 In order to emphasize the importance of one of the petitions in the prayer Jesus has taught his followers, Jesus expands upon it: If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. To receive the forgiveness we need from God we must forgive those who have harmed us.

15 To refuse to forgive others blocks out our being forgiven: But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. Jesus will later put God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others in perspective (18:21-35), making it clear that God extends his forgiveness first, and that the forgiveness we receive from God far outweigh all the forgiveness we will ever grant. Here Jesus is content to emphasize that we cannot expect God to forgiven us if we refuse to forgive others. Two centuries earlier Sirach had linked receiving God's forgiveness with our forgiving others (Sirach 28:1-5), and Jesus upholds this view.

Forgive your neighbor's injustice;
then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.
Should a man nourish anger against his fellow
and expect healing from the LORD?
Should a man refuse mercy to his fellows,
yet seek pardon for his own sins?

Sirach 28:2-4

For reflection: Who do I find it most difficult to truly forgive? What step might I take to extend forgiveness to that person?

I didn't connect this with my self-realization earlier but it came back to me when reading this comment from The Anchoress.

But then I thought - how awful it must be to live out all of your mistakes and sins in public - to go through life with people presuming to know the state of your mind and soul, when all of our minds and souls are sometimes quite mucked up?

Suddenly, in my mind, Teddy Kennedy went from being a political figure with whom I vehemently disagree and became a living, breathing, human being. A person. For whom I could easily pray, despite my feelings one way or the other about him.

I had brought Matthew's Gospel with me to work so I could begin sharing some highlights with y'all and I dug through it to my morning readings. They became a finger shaken at me by Jesus as I read over them again. Another tiny step toward my trying to live my faith and not just give it lip service.

This brought me again to the hard truth that the Christian faith, truly lived out, is no easy road. John C. Wright said it quite well.

Have you ever had one of those days, where you are exasperated by the opinions and bad personal habits of well-respected artisans in your particular craft, and you find that you are an opinionated blow-hard who enjoys complaining and bellyaching about other people's shortcomings, and you also have a live-journal where you can express your most private thoughts of contempt and disdain for the yammerheads whose idiocy so richly merits insult ---- but then you remember you are a Christian, and so you are under orders not merely not to complain (for even the Gentiles are well-bred) but to love and pray for such people? Worse yet, you cannot pray for them in an ungenerous spirit, because Our Boss who art in Heaven does not accept sacrifices offered unwillingly.

What a difficult, annoying religion!

To those of you who think religion is a self-delusion based on wish-fulfillment, all I can remark is that this religion does not fulfill my wishes. My wishes, if we are being honest, would run to polygamy, self-righteousness, vengeance and violence: a Viking religion would suit me better, or maybe something along Aztec lines. The Hall of Valhalla, where you feast all night and battle all day, or the paradise of the Mohammedans, where you have seventy-two dark-eyed virgins to abuse, fulfills more wishes of base creatures like me than any place where they neither marry nor are given in marriage. This turn-the-other cheek jazz might be based any number of psychological appeals or spiritual insights, but one thing it is not based on is wish-fulfillment.

An absurd and difficult religion! If it were not true, no one would bother with it....

Lord have mercy on me and bless Teddy Kennedy and his family in this dark time for them.

Undeserved Love

Undeserved love also brings with it the possibility of being shamed. From the great chasm that lies between what we are and what those who love us think we are rises up a fruitful and challenging embarrassment, especially when it is they who glimpse our true calling long before we ourselves can see it. The German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann says that someone who is loved this way is "pushed beyond himself." In this sense, love becomes a clarion call to transformation -- the transformation of human nature made possible through the sacrifice of Christ.

This aspect of love -- that it urges us to be better than we are, to grow into what God intended us to be -- explains how the person who loves us most can also be our best critic. It is because he or she wants our life to be truly good. Thus, the true lover forgives rather than excuses our human failings. The distinction is an important one. In excusing, he pretends that something bad did not happen after all. In forgiving, he affirms that it did indeed happen and that he hopes and prays we will come to recognize this fact and repent.

By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness
by Paula Huston

I never thought of that concept before ... that someone who is undeservedly loved is pushed beyond himself. But that is exactly what God does with us. Fascinating ... and humbling.