Trying to Grow Up!

In this post, we’ll examine the healing power of forgiveness. And the importance of keeping sharp objects out of small children’s reach.

I Just wanna Grow Up!

My son came down the stairs with a hefty Band-Aid lodged between his nose and upper lip, looking like a seven-year-old version of Groucho Marx.

When his mother asked him what he’d done, he casually replied, “I cut myself shaving.”

Joshua had borrowed his sister’s razor, having decided he is too big for the plastic toy razor we gave him last year.

My wife, nervously peeling the Band-Aid away to make sure there was no need for stitches, scolded Josh, “How many times have I told you to stay away from your sister’s razor!?”

But Josh just wants to be a man. Now.

Aren't we all like that when it comes to the spiritual life? We want to grow up NOW.

We sincerely desire to move from spiritual kindergarten to spiritual adulthood. We want, and rightly, to walk with the saints, God's spiritually mature children. But we fail. We forget it's a journey that takes time.

We can understand the frustration that Saint Paul articulated when describing our wounded human condition,

“For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if [I] do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Ro 7:19-20, NABRE). 

It can be quite frustrating! What in the world is wrong with us?

I Want to be Free!

Sin is the failure to meet the demands of authentic love. In order to love, we have to be free. We want to be free. But we often entertain a false notion of freedom. We, like Adam and Eve, want to be captains of our own destiny, have it our way! We think we know the best way to achieve happiness (usually a shortcut), and we forget that exercising self-will tends to lead us into moral chaos, which makes it harder to love and to receive love.

Father Jacques Philippe put it this way:

“We have this great thirst for freedom because our most fundamental aspiration is for happiness; and we sense that there is no happiness without love, and no love without freedom. This is perfectly true. Human beings were created for love, and they can only find happiness in loving and being loved. As St. Catherine of Siena puts it, man cannot live without loving. The problem is that our love often goes in the wrong direction: we love ourselves, selfishly, and we end up frustrated, because only genuine love can fulfill us… There is true love, and therefore happiness, only between people who freely yield possession of the self in order to give themselves to one another” (Interior Freedom, pg. 13).

“Missing the Mark”

"Sin” originally meant “to miss the mark.” That makes so much sense! When we sin, it is usually because we strive for the good, for happiness, but aim poorly. For example: It is good to want to feed your family. But if you rob a bank to get money to do that, you are seeking a good in a very bad way.

We all sin. We have to get over that reality. The pope tells us time and again: we are sinners. Even a pope is a sinner in need of God's forgiveness. 

Sometimes we sin in small ways. Sometimes in big ways. Sometimes in really big ways.

That's where forgiveness comes in.  

Unleashing the Power of Forgiveness

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the meeting place of God’s infinite love and our miserable condition.

Spiritually speaking, we enter the confessional hunched and broken, shouldering a thousand pound bag of sin-stones; we exit the box, springing burden-free like a gazelle. People look at us strangely: What the heck happened to that guy/gal?

Freedom!

Someone was just released from the bondage of guilt and shame through an encounter with Christ in the confessional. Sin binds us. Christ frees us. And what does he free us for? Love! Love can only be lived in freedom.

The True Love Story

I wonder if one of the reasons our modern world is a mess is that we don’t appreciate the importance of mercy. Love Story, a popular movie from my childhood, had the main character say to her beloved, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Really? Heartstrings aside, good luck with that attitude!

A man I knew refused to speak to his own daughter for eighteen years after a disagreement they had when she was about twenty. A father and daughter estranged for eighteen precious years. Eighteen years, wasted!

They finally reconciled when she was nearly forty. They deeply regretted the long gap in their relationship. But, through mutual forgiveness, which freed them from the chains of resentment, guilt, and shame that they had carried for all those years, they were able to experience a beautiful, life-giving relationship for twelve years before the father's death.

The true Love Story is the story of God's mercy unleashed.

We see this truth demonstrated through the acts of giving forgiveness, asking for forgiveness, and receiving forgiveness.

Giving Forgiveness

Giving forgiveness is an expression of mercy.

When we forgive someone who has harmed us (as we recognize we must do in the Our Father), we open the door to deep healing, not only for the forgiven but for ourselves. Recently, a priest said that refusing to forgive is like continually picking at the scab of a wound. The wound never heals.

With forgiveness, healing begins. Forgiveness calls Christ, the Divine Physician, into the picture.

Asking for Forgiveness

To seek forgiveness from a person we've harmed is an act of mercy, too, because it often initiates the healing process. This act of humility on the part of the transgressor can relieve emotional pain for the injured person. Actually, it can bring healing to both parties. It is a win-win situation.

And if the injured party is not ready to forgive, at least we may rest assured that our side of the street is clean, and we see that have further opportunity to pray for the other to find healing.

Receiving Forgiveness

But there’s another important aspect of forgiveness: We have to practice the humility it takes to receive forgiveness--- from God, from one another, and even from ourselves (sometimes we are our harshest judge and jury).

Sometimes we go to confession, lay the bag of sin-stones at the priest's feet, and then on the way out the door, reclaim the bag and begin to lug it around again. The bag is like a phantom limb that we feel, but that isn’t really there any longer. Why? Because God forgave it. He took it and vaporized it. It no longer exists. It’s gone!

Jesus told St. Faustina that Judas' refusal to trust in God's mercy was a more grievous sin than his betrayal. St. Therese of Lisieux came to a similar conclusion, writing to a cousin, "What offends Jesus, what wounds his heart, is lack of trust" (quoted by Fr. Jacques Philippe, The way of Trust and Love).

We have the choice to either receive forgiveness and let our sins go, or to allow them to burden us for the rest of our lives (which makes it difficult at best to be of service to others).

Forgiveness helps restore us to wholeness.

Growing Up

The saints, our treasury of spiritual big boys and girls, teach us that a huge part of being a spiritual grown-up is to live a life of mercy. Mercy is an almost infallible sign of spiritual maturity.

Showing and receiving mercy is far more important than impressing others with the way we pray, or how devoted we appear at Mass. Mercy is what Christianity looks like when it's working out in the field.

Jesus was all about mercy. Look at the lives that were (and continue to be) completely transformed by his mercy. Mercy is his calling card. As Christians, it's supposed to be ours, as well. We are called to demonstrate mercy by how we forgive, how we ask for forgiveness, and how we receive forgiveness.

As the song says, they will know we are Christians by our love.

Will they? 

I suppose that's for us to decide.