24th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Mt. Carmel/OLR, NOLA
In
Dante's Inferno,
those who lived and died as slaves to anger are consigned to the
Fifth Circle of Hell.* The violently angry spend eternity attacking
one another on surface of the swampy waters of the River Styx. The
sullenly angry sulk beneath the slime, forever stewing in their
self-imposed loneliness. Though they share in the sin of inordinate
anger – expressed in different ways – what these sinners have
most in common is their stubborn refusal to forgive. . .while
they could. Rather
than release her offender from his debt, the violently angry sinner
slashes out in a rage, causing him harm. And rather than release his
offender from her debt, the sullenly angry sinner retreats into a
silent, brooding resentment that slowly consumes all of his charity.
When our Lord urges us to forgive our offenders as many times as
necessary, he's not giving us some Hallmarkish therapeutic advice for
Better Living. He's telling us outright that the failure to forgive –
in the end – is tantamount to choosing to live for all eternity
basting away in the slimy waters of the River Styx, Hell. The failure
to forgive another is the failure to receive forgiveness from God.
If
forgiveness were easy to give, we wouldn't need our Lord to command
us to do it. We wouldn't need that image of the master turning his
unforgiving servant over the torturers. That forgiveness is difficult
to give is part and parcel of our fallen humanity. But why is
forgiveness so hard to give? It might be b/c we are afraid that
forgiving someone who has offended us might come to believe that
his/her offense wasn't really all that offensive to begin with. If
I can easily forgive being hurt, then maybe I wasn't that badly hurt
in the first place.
Maybe forgiveness is hard b/c we are afraid of being hurt again by
the same person, by the same offense. If
I forgive this hurt, maybe he/she will hurt me again in the same way.
Or perhaps forgiveness is hard b/c we like the feeling of another
being in our debt for sin. She
hurt me and I'm not forgiving her b/c I like that she owes me. As
our Lord makes clear, my failure to forgive is a trap for me. There
is no justification, no way to make right, my refusal to grant to
another what God has freely given to me. Yes, I've been sinned
against – terribly wounded – and my fallen nature urges me to
seek justice, to seek balance. But when I seek that balance w/o
acknowledging that my own sins have been forgiven, what I am truly
seeking is vengeance.
And
unrepented vengeance earns me a dip in the River Styx, or a visit
with the master's torturers. Our Lord recounts at the end of his
parable: “I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on
you?'” The obvious answer here is: “Yes, Lord!” If you can't
bring yourself to answer that question in the affirmative, why not?
The most common reason I've heard as a priest goes something like
this: “I could say that I've forgiven, but I don't feel like I've
forgiven.” Our Lord requires us to “forgive from the heart,”
meaning a genuine forgiveness that relieves the other person of
his/her debt to us. No where does the Lord require us to feel good
about forgiving another. No where does he demand that we be happy
about it. Forgiveness is an act of the will – from the heart – we
just do it.
And then we go on with our lives knowing that no one owes us a debt
of sin, knowing that we ourselves owe no one a debt of forgiveness.
“Wrath and anger are hateful things,” Sirach tells us. And only a
sinner holds them tight.
____________________________
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