June 25, 2007

Try to imagine yourself trying to explain Jesus’ admonition about “turning the other cheek” to a group of young men in the South Bronx. I’ve “been there, done that,” and it went about as well as you would expect. Their response was basically, “That’s crazy!” I wonder, though, if the response is much different inside the minds and hearts of most people in most places.

The proof of the sublime sanity of Jesus’ new law of forgiveness is seen by those who life it out, versus the insanity of those who only make the world blind by their eye-for-eye retaliation. Let’s understand clearly that this is not a call to renounce self-defense, but revenge. Forgiveness comes as a powerful force of healing in a violent world; one great act of forgiveness can outweigh the scale of many acts of violence.

If you haven’t yet heard of a book called Left to Tell, by Immaculee Ilibigiza, I would highly recommend you look into it. It is an amazing but true story of a Rwandan woman, kept in inhuman conditions and torturous life-threatening situations, who rose above it through her Catholic faith. Her act of forgiveness and the triumph of her interior freedom, not without times of inner wrestling, leaves no doubt that God is at work in His mercy.

Saint Francis said it simply in one of his admonitions: “They are truly peacemakers who are able to preserve their peace of spirit and body for love of our Lord Jesus Christ, despite all that they suffer in this world.” It is possible to live in this way of peace because the Lord Jesus outweighed the scales of sin by His own act of forgiveness at Calvary. In that one Sacrifice is a rich mine of transforming grace just waiting for us to tap into. Not to do so is a crazy, blind and toothless existence.

Fr. Richard Roemer, CFR

Most Blessed Sacrament Friary, Newark, NJ

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