Reconciliation: Mercy, forgiveness and love
by Father Francis P. DeSiano, CSP
September 4, 2014

The following is a homily based on the Scripture readings for Sunday, Sept. 7.

 

“We will never forget.” I saw these words painted on a mural in New York City this last weekend. The paint looked a little dimmed, but it was pretty clear what the reference was: New York will never forget the attack of Sept. 11, 2001, even with the passage of more than a dozen years. Some things we make a point of not forgetting, particularly our grudges. From Ferguson to Watts; from the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust; from the Spanish Armada to the Crusades – we all have long memories.

So what might reconciliation mean? Are we supposed to forget atrocities, crimes against humanity, the Hitlers and Atillas of the world? Is finding peace a kind of Alzheimer’s applied to the pains of the past – our pains, the pains of our nation, the scars of history?

There seem to be two components in reconciliation from our readings today. From the Gospel we learn that reconciliation comes not from forgetting, but from facing the issues in front of us. And from Ezekiel we learn that we are all involved in the pursuit of justice, in making the world better; no one is excused because our lives are intimately connected when it comes to the good of the society around us.

“If your sister or brother offends you …” Don’t crab behind their back. Don’t trash the person before the office staff. Don’t give the details on Facebook. Go and talk, bring someone along to help set the stage. Maybe you can change a mind – or have a meeting of minds – and reconciliation can happen.

We’ve seen this, say, after the Apartheid regime in South Africa, how Archbishop Tutu conducted forums in which people could come and clear the air – air the dirty laundry, make public what would otherwise be hidden and fester. And the key here is the acknowledgement of wrongdoing. “I did wrong. I should not have done that. I am sorry.” These words for us today are almost as hard for us to say as the words “I forgive you. I want to make peace.” We are blocked on both fronts.

Ezekiel gives us part of an answer here because he tells us that the good of the world around us is the responsibility of us all. If we can help each other do good, Ezekiel says, then all our lives will be saved. If we can make the effort to touch the heart of another, then both of us will be saved. But this can happen, I think, only if we all recognize that we are all in need of forgiveness. We can easily think of Ezekiel as giving the goody-goodies permission to shame others. But Paul’s letter to the Romans, which we’ve been reading for almost two months on Sunday, has made clear that we are all culpable, that we all need mercy and, in today’s passage – that mercy is shown in the power of love.

I think reconciliation can be hard for us because we are so afraid of shame: to keep from being shamed ourselves, it’s easier to shame and blame someone else. But is that not why Christ came to bear the fruits of our sin, to bear our shame: he wanted to liberate us from this environment of shame and move us to an entirely different environment, that of love. Love bears each other’s burdens, even the burdens of sin and shame, for the sake of bringing wholeness to everyone, and the world.

So there’s the story of the old man driving his elderly wife, complaining and muttering. They are going back to the restaurant where they had lunch. It seems she’s forgotten her glasses and he is quite peeved. He walks into the restaurant, steaming, when the hostess recognizes him and says, “Oh, thank God you came back. You left your credit card and your medications at the table.” And his wife stands there, smiling to herself, as her husband turns red in embarrassment.

More than being ready to accuse each other, is there a way we can find Christ’s path of love and, carrying our brokenness and pains, bring healing and wholeness to our l