7   LEARNINGS ON  FORGIVENESS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 3rd Tuesday in Lent is, “7 Learnings on Forgiveness.”

Lenten homework:  Get a clean  piece of paper or a blank computer screen and come up with 7 learnings on forgiveness.

I picked the number 7, because 7 is the number in today’s gospel.

I did my 7 last night - to practice what I’m preaching. If you do this, it’s not like writing on sidewalk cement. Nope.  It’s an ongoing process, but come with 7 and then revisit your 7 every Lent or whenever you have time or you have trouble with forgiving someone.  

# 1: Everyone has to deal with the issue of forgiveness. Everyone has been hurt by someone out there: neighbor, family member co-worker. Someone gipped us, stole from us, talked about us behind our back. So number one: everyone has to learn to deal with forgiveness.  It can me major. It can be minor. It can be abuse.  It could be forgiving another. It could be forgiving oneself. Name your poison. Name your hurt. Name your daily, “bummer”. Everyone has to deal with the issue of forgiveness.

# 2: Forgiveness takes time - sometimes a long, long time. That’s number two.   Walk. Talk. Vent. Give yourself time to get over a mistake or a hurt or a cut - so that you can heal.

# 3: Everyone has hurts in their way back when - hurts that still affect us all these years. Like our dad wasn’t a hugger and his dad wasn’t a hugger and his dad wasn’t a hugger, so we got no hugs. I hear that one at times. Or we allow envy to eat us up - envy that se use comparisons to hurt ourselves - envy because  we weren’t the favorite. For some, we feel we’re still treated that way today.  Or some family member or classmate did much better than we did - and that reality and issue shows up in ways that still bother us.

#4: Sometimes we’re not fair - like the guy in today’s gospel. Some boss forgave us - even though we were as guilty as sin. Then we don’t catch forgiveness, and we don’t forgive others.  We might even say the words of the Our Father,  10,000 times, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass or hurt us” - but we don’t  trespass into that way of doing life.

# 5:  Sometimes we won’t forgive another as a way of  paying them back. Somehow we think we’re hurting them by ongoing anger or resentment and we hope they sense it or see it. Many times they have no clue this is going on.

# 6:  Learn to say what Jesus said from the cross, ‘Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.’ People are dumb. We’re dumb. In one split second we can ruin something that took 20 years to build. In one short second we can mess ourselves up.

# 7:  Be creative in your pay backs.  Silence sometimes is a great weapon.  Or there is the Chinese Proverb: “If your enemy wrongs you, buy each of his children a drum.”  Or  sometimes our motive is: “This person is not going to learn, so my being screamful  isn’t going to work. Forgiveness might and that might hit them into feeling small, since you are being big with the way you’re forgiving that person.

CONCLUSION

That’s my homily. That’s my homework for you. Come up with 7 learnings about forgiveness.

The bottom line is that we all catch this main message of Jesus.

Let me close with a wonderful little story.

In a far corner of a New York Cemetery there is a small gravestone polished smooth by the wind and the weather.  The stone has no name on it - no date - but  it has one word on it -  “forgiven”

May that be all of us.