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.
