Spirituality of the Readings

Forgiveness

What happens when someone misbehaves and hurts you? What should you do, punch ‘em out?

No.

Jesus lays out a detailed plan in the Gospel about how to help a person, who has done you harm, especially someone in the Christian community. This strategy applies whatever the damage was: saying unfair things behind your back; embarrassing you in public; stealing; unfaithfulness; you name it.

First, go to the person and let her or him know that you believe you have been hurt by what they did or said. This is not an opportunity to “let my anger out,” to get my rights, or worse. It is an attempt to repair the relationship, no matter whose fault it was. It is an effort to help, not hurt.

Of course, in Sunday’s story, Jesus is presuming that there is a basis of love between you and the other person. Another way to say it is that you are both members of the church.

But what if going to the person does not succeed?

Jesus says you should next take two or three witnesses along. They will back you up—if your interpretation of the problem is correct. If the person still does not listen, keep trying, he says. Tell the church. Continue to work on it until the matter is smoothed out. Let truth and forgiveness rule.

The underlying reason behind this whole strategy is hinted at in the First Reading. There the Lord says that Ezekiel must speak out to a person who is doing evil to him. The point is not to punish that person, or to turn Ezekiel into a police interrogation unit. It is to try and help the person back from the danger to their own self and to the community. “Frighten the poor sheep back,” the poet Hopkins puts it.

A personal story. I had a terrible disagreement with a colleague/friend a number of years ago. We were working together on a musical event and it seemed to each of us that the other had done something unforgivable, hurtful and unprofessional. Believe me, I do not know who was right and who was wrong. But we spoke about it one-on-one and gradually came back into each other’s good graces. We remain very good friends.

The same thing happened a number of summers later. I was the one who “blew up” because of the wrongs I absolutely knew were being done to me. I even sent a peeved email. My friend sent a scorcher in return!

Then we worked together to create the event! Both of us knew instinctively what had happened. “We were tired and quite stressed out, weren’t we,” my friend said. “So we each did our stressed-out thing. Yet we were both trying to help the performance be wonderful.” As you can guess, we remained great friends.

So we learn how relations can work when Christians are “all too human” and hurt each other. It is not a matter of who broke the rules, because all the rules are summed up in a single saying. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Second Reading).

How good it is.

John Foley, SJ

**From Saint Louis University

Kristin Clauson