A message about forgiving--ourselves as well as others--in a tense society

This is the text of John Cardinal O'Connor's (1920-2000) homily
at a Lenten Sunday Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Late the other night I turned on the television for the news for just a few minutes. It said that there was a boxing match on. I got it just at the beginning when the referee used the customary words to the two ferocious-looking fighters, "Shake hands and come out fighting." I thought to myself what an extraordinary statement to make, truly an oxymoron if there is one! Does that really mean anything, shake hands and then come out and try to kill one another?

The more I thought about this, the more I thought about it as a reflection of our society, the tensions that are so constant in our society. If one car cuts off another, the driver of the car that has been cut off is quite likely to flare up and to curse the other and cut him off. You see people stop their cars and jump out and scream out at each other. We can get on a subway and, if it is overcrowded and someone jostles us, there can be an immediate inflammatory reaction.

"Shake hands and come out fighting." I wonder how often this happens in marriages? Some incident occurs and one party hurts the other and they say, "Well, all right. Let's forget about it." But now there is a tension. The next time something happens it is worse than before and each lashes out at the other.

Why do I mention this at all? Simply because I happened to see this for just a moment on television the other night? No. Because last Sunday I remarked that I had been asked if I would reflect throughout all of the Sundays of Lent on forgiveness. I thought about that and I thought that is a wonderful idea. So we began last Sunday, and we will continue until the conclusion of Lent.

But there is another reason I mention this. That is the nature of today's extraordinarily beautiful Gospel, the Gospel of the Transfiguration. [Mt. 17:1-9] I will reflect on that in just a few moments. There is not one of us here, I suspect, who has not been wounded by another or perceived himself or herself wounded by another. Whether we are single, married, religious, priests, bishops, whatever our state in life, we feel wounded by someone. Perhaps we try our best to get over it. Some of us have been lightly wounded and some of us have been critically wounded. Sometimes it festers within us. When we say, "I forgive you," or we go into the confessional and we tell the priest about our anger, our resentment and possibly even our hatred and we promise to try to be reconciled, we promise to forgive, and yet sometimes residual effect remains.

Are we prone to say, "I can forgive but I can not forget" so that the next time some incident occurs everything that has happened in the past is brought up once again? How frequently does this happen in marriage and what a tremendous barrier it may be to renewing a marriage that has already been hurt, a marriage that has been wounded, a marriage in which the couple have drifted apart to some degree? If either party permits every wrong that has occurred in the past, or seeming wrong to fester, to be added to all of the others that have occurred so that each time there is another misunderstanding, then it is not isolated. It is attacked on the basis of all the wrongs that have occurred in the past. Is this true of a great number of us here, that we truly refuse to forgive? We may shake hands but then we come out fighting. Is the refusal to forgive a real cancer in our souls?

I never tire of repeating the story of a brother and sister in a parish in which I was stationed possibly 50 years ago, who lived together in the same house, who went to Mass every Sunday very faithfully but by different routes. She walked along one street and he walked along another. They sat, stood and knelt in different parts of the church. They came up to the altar rail in different positions. Both received the Body and Blood of Mercy and of Love and both went home by different routes and never talked to one another though living in the same house. How can that be? Is that truly Christian? Is that truly Catholic? That is a cancer which eats at our very souls and can be much more destructive, much more devastating to the person who refuses to forgive than to the person who is unforgiven.

Is it possible also that there are some of us here who might be able to forgive everybody but ourselves? We can commit a serious sin. We can go to confession and receive the sacrament of reconciliation. The priest can say, "I absolve you of all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and give us a penance which we dutifully perform, and yet deep within us we question whether or not we are truly forgiven. It worries us. It is like a pebble in our shoe. It is constantly there.

That is why scrupulosity is called scrupulosity. It is taken from the Latin word meaning "a pebble," "an irritant." We try to ignore it but it always makes us anxious. We will be reflecting on scrupulosity and forgiveness. That might seem strange because we take for granted that this is such a sinful world. We take for granted that there is no such thing today as an individual who is scrupulous, who worries about past sins. But it is indeed a widespread disease, widespread enough that it is worth talking about in a congregation like this.

The most beautiful stories in the Gospel, after all, are stories of forgiveness. The woman taken in adultery thrown at the feet of Christ, ridiculed by all of those standing by urging him to carry out the law to have her stoned to death. But what did Christ say? "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone." We have all sinned. Every one of us here has sinned. Some of us have sinned more grievously than others, some of us more consistently than others. But we have all sinned. Our Lord knew that when he said, "Let the one who is without sin among you cast the first stone."

It is interesting that they all began to sneak away and that the oldest went first, apparently because they had the most sins. Then what did Christ do? We are told that he did not even look at the woman. He bent down and scribbled in the dust. It does not matter what he wrote. We do not know. But Christ was so sensitive to the woman. He did not look at her. He did not want her to feel ashamed or embarrassed. Christ asked, "Has no one condemned you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and sin no more." That is the essence of forgiveness.

Then we have the beautiful story of the prodigal son, the son who had squandered all of his inheritance. He was promiscuous with women. Ultimately he finds himself living among the pigs and eating what they left. What does the prodigal son say? "In my father's house I would be dining luxuriously. In my father's house I would be in silks and satins." Of course, his father's house simply means union with our Divine Lord and the potential of eternal happiness. So the prodigal son goes back not expecting to be completely forgiven. But his father just leaps with joy, literally, when he learns that he is coming. "My son who was lost has been found!"

Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, might well have had this in mind when he reminded us in this beautiful document from which we read last Sunday, "The Mystery of the Incarnation," the document which he has published in preparation for the great Jubilee of the Year 2000.

"Let no one in this Jubilee year wish to exclude himself [or herself] from the Father's embrace. Let no one behave like the elder brother in the Gospel parable who refuses to enter the house to celebrate. May the joy of forgiveness be stronger and greater than any resentment. ..."

That kind of resentment is not uncommon, is it, the resentment of the older brother to the prodigal son? "Here I have been so faithful to my father. Here I have done everything he has told me. I have worked hard to build up this farm and his estate. My brother rushed off and throws away all his money and lives in sin and he comes back and my father has a big banquet for him. What kind of justice is that?"

Do some of us feel that way about the good fortune of others, about mercy shown to others, about the love extended to those who in our judgment do not deserve it? But Christ was so merciful, so forgiving. We have in one way the most serious defection of all, the defection of Peter, Peter in whom Christ had trusted, Peter to whom he had entrusted so much, his entire Church. "You are Peter and on you I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Peter ran away when Christ was taken captive.

Not only did Peter run away but he did what perhaps you and I have done at one time or another in our lives. When questioned by a barmaid outside the hall where Jesus was being tried someone said to Peter, "You look like one of the fellows that associate with him." Peter said, "I know not the man. I have nothing to do with him." Three times Peter denied knowing Christ. So then did Christ deny knowing Peter? No. Christ carried out his promise. "I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

There was the ambition of James and John and of their mother coming to Jesus and asking, "When you come into your kingdom let one of my sons sit on your right hand and one on your left." This was foolish because it demonstrated that they did not know why he had come to this world, they did not know that he had come to be crucified for us. Yet Jesus forgave them, forgave them that kind of pride, that kind of ambition of which we can all be guilty.

It is hardly by chance that the first two statements that our Divine Lord made from the cross--when he was hanging in utter misery, with flies all over him, with blood dripping into his eyes, with every muscle crying out with pain--were, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," and the statement he made to the one good thief on the cross who reached out to him asking to be remembered when Christ came into his kingdom. He said, "This very day you will be with me in paradise." Is that per chance or were all of these just demonstrations of God's great mercy that he wants all of us to remember in relating to one another, in forgiving one another for whatever has been a sin against us, for asking God's forgiveness knowing that it will come so quickly regardless of what we may have done.

What has all this to do with the Transfiguration Gospel? Why did Peter and James and John behave so differently when Christ was transfigured before their very eyes? As his face was shining as the sun, we are told, "The disciples fell forward on the ground overcome with fear." As soon as they saw Jesus reflecting his divinity, as soon as they saw Jesus in his glory, as soon as they heard the words, "This is my beloved Son, listen to him," they fell on their faces in fear and in awe. This is the key to our forgiving others, to our forgiving ourselves, to our recognizing deep within ourselves that God can forgive us no matter what sin we have committed.

We enter the confessional and we hear the soothing, consoling words of the priest, "I absolve you of all your sins. I forgive all your sins no matter what they have been." What makes this possible? That Christ sees us as reflections of himself and asks us to see every individual we meet and ourselves when we look in the mirror as reflections of his divine glory sparked by his own divinity. When asked to forgive others we are, in a certain sense, being asked to forgive God himself because every human person is God-like, made in God's own image and likeness. Every one of us who receives the Body and Blood of our Lord today will be transformed into Christ himself. That should make forgiveness of others very, very easy indeed. That should make forgiveness of ourselves equally easy.

I see a very close link between the Gospel of the Transfiguration and the Church's teaching which is so fundamentally Christ's teaching on forgiveness to the degree that we see our Divine Lord in everyone that we meet including always ourselves. To that degree our hearts, our souls, our very beings are filled with mercy and therefore with forgiveness.

In the brief work by Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn called "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" there is a beautiful line which fits perfectly with the Gospel of the Transfiguration and the teaching of mercy and forgiveness. "Your soul wants to love the Lord. Why don't you allow it freedom?"