Last weekend, I helped put on a men’s conference at my parish called Courageous. We had over 170 men attend a one day event that included various talks from priests, religious, and lay men in the parish talking about what it means to be a courageous, Catholic man in today’s world, the challenges we face, and how we as individual men can be more courageous in our faith and overcome those challenges.
To say the least, the day was awesome! As Matthew Kelly puts it, it truly showed the genius of Catholicism, and how we as men can build our own spiritual foundations and shape the foundations of other men, through the foundation of the Church. We learned that the true posture of a courageous man is not one who stands to face his fears and trials in life head on, brashly, arrogantly, seemingly by oneself, but rather it is one who kneels in prayer, trusting in God to be there for us, with us, guiding us – together – with other men.
Coming out of the day, we were all challenged – challenged to grow in our faith, challenged to leverage the grace inherent within our Church to help us with this, and challenged to become better men for our families, our communities, and for God. We were challenged to be courageous – and love.
But it’s easier said than done. This courage was on my mind when reflecting on today’s readings.
The readings today are pretty blunt. Anger. Vengeance. Wrath. Problems we humans have dealt with since the beginning. Is it more prevalent in the world today? Perhaps. But it’s definitely more amplified, more publicized. We constantly hear stories of rage on the highways, in airports and on planes, in shopping malls and everywhere in-between.
In a society where everything is super-fast and instant, where we are constantly on overload, I believe that as a whole, our tempers, our fuses, blow with increasing velocity and little patience. Anything, it seems, has a tendency to make someone snap.
And perhaps you see this most in social media. As I’ve said before, I’m not some anti-technology person. I make a living as a web developer, and technology to me is a tool. Simply that. One that, if used right, can improve our daily lives. But as we’ve seen, technology – the internet, social media, the news media – can be abused, and this if often the case.
How many times do you see someone on social media comment on something, and get downright mean and hurtful? Behind the mask of a screen, we often see what is in the heart of people – the anger and the rage the meanness. It is disturbing.
This very trend has been a factor in numerous people – kids – choosing to kill themselves from this type of activity online. Where is the character? Where is the integrity? Where is the respect? And where is the forgiveness?
Because that’s what it all comes down to. Forgiveness. In today’s gospel, the master has mercy on the servant and forgives his debt. But the servants heart and soul is full of anger and rage. It’s all about himself because when another begs of his mercy, the servant loses control and threatens the man, giving him no mercy, still wanting his debt paid. Rather than being thankful and paying that mercy forward, he continues the cycle of anger and rage and ruthlessness.
Now, the parable is not saying that we should not ask people to payback debts, but what it is saying is that God will forgive our wrongdoings, our sins, if we ask Him. God is slow to anger, as it says in the Psalm. He will give us mercy. But we in turn, must extend the same mercy and forgiveness to others who wrong us, and ask for our forgiveness. If we cannot forgive others, we will not be forgiven.
We have to change what is in our very heart, constantly seek the conversion of our soul and ask God to transform our heart to one full of love and forgiveness, rather than of wrath and vengeance.
Forgiveness of those who wrong us, of our enemies, is an extremely tough thing. I think of this past week as we observed the 16th anniversary of 9/11, how it is a tall order to forgive terrorists, who literally want to kill those who do not fall in line with their ideology. How can we do this? It takes courage, an immense amount of courage. And it’s a courage and grace that only comes from Christ.
He showed how to forgive when He was on the cross, in agony, yet He asked His Father to forgive them for they did not know what they are doing.
We as Christians have to be the example. And this is the genius of our faith – forgiveness. But we have to break this cycle in our own lives – in our families, on the highway, in our workplace, online – in everything we do.
If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive. Either way, there is a domino effect. And our ability to forgive comes directly from God because we don’t have the grace to do this on our own. We must seek this help from God. We have to pray for this courage, for this grace.
It’s tough to show mercy and love and forgiveness to those who wrong us, who persecute us. But often we only see what’s on the surface, and we don’t know that battle they are fighting internally, or what their situation is behind the scenes that may be causing the behavior. We have no control over this. But what we do have control over is how we ourselves react, and our choice to forgive, and seeking God’s grace and help throughout.
And often, it’s just a simple prayer to Jesus, asking Him to please forgive them, for they know not what they are doing, and asking Him to give you the courage you need in your heart to forgive as well. It’s the only way we can begin to break the cycle.
