UNDESERVING of his love • of his forgiveness • of his mercy by Shane Rapp, BC ‘08
EVERYONE SAYS FORGIVENESS IS A LOVELY IDEA, UNTIL THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO FORGIVE. -C.S. LEWIS
C.S. Lewis says in his work Mere Christianity, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” Admittedly, I have had little to forgive. I have never been betrayed by a friend. I have never been publically humiliated, other than perhaps by myself. I have never been cheated or robbed or attacked. I have led a charmed life. Of course, this is not the case for everyone. On the global stage, violence and vitriol are destroying entire countries. In our nation, families and communities are crumbling at every turn. In our Church, there is abuse and scandal. In our own lives, people lie and manipulate and gossip.
There is much that needs forgiving.
There is nothing wrong with justice. Justice is giving and getting what is owed, an idea as old as humanity, as natural as breathing. Even I, who have so little to forgive, appeal immediately to justice at the slightest perception of being wronged: “Here I am busting my butt, and so and so doesn’t even notice.” “I did all my work; I deserve a break.” “I’m not talking to her, she completely embarrassed me in front of such and such earlier.” Justice is instinctual. But mercy, giving and getting what is not owed, giving and getting better than what is owed, is the crux of the Christian life. We cannot forget how radical Christ’s message of mercy is. And we must be honest about our desire for mercy. To have any sense of peace, we have to forget about what others owe us. And when I look in my heart right now, or in my past, and I see the pride, the lust, the gluttony, the anger, the selfpity, the resentment, the pettiness, I know that for every slight that I have experienced, I have doled out a hundred, even if they are unseen. If I am honest about what happens in my heart, I owe much more to others than I probably admit. Mercy is not only demanded of us as Christians – it’s the only hope we have. Forgiveness is only forgiveness when the other person DOESN’T deserve it, when you have no reason to forgive them, when they will likely do the same thing again tomorrow. And that’s the kind of forgiveness we want, too. Feeding the hungry is only mercy when they CAN’T feed us back, when they likely ARE a drug addict or an alcoholic or one of those guys who just takes everyone’s money and then drives home in a Benz. And that’s the mercy we’ll need, too. There’s no point in coming up with all the reasons a person doesn’t deserve forgiveness. There’s no point in making a list of all the mistakes poor people probably made to end up poor, or all the bad things they might do with your money if you give it to them. And there’s certainly no point in keeping score with all the people in your life, weighing your own actions against theirs, giving only as much as they do, going only as far as they will.
It’s only mercy if they DON’ T deser ve it.
My challenge would be to find the person in your life who least deserves forgiveness, and forgive them. Find the person who might least deserve a second or third or twelfth chance, and give it to them. Find the person who deserves every bad thing they have in their life, and give them something good. This is my challenge to myself as well. The problem is, this is an impossible challenge.
Justice is what we are capable of. Mercy is beyond our nature.
And so we turn to the hope of the Christ. We believe that our Creator has seen our smallness, our weakness, our inability to escape our own cycles of selfishness, and instead of letting us be doomed as the just result of our sins, He offers us a new life, a new self. He offers us His Self. Being Catholic is not about avoiding sin. It’s not about doing good things. It’s about admitting we are desperate, bankrupt, in the gutter, and begging for mercy. And ours is a God who stopped at nothing to give us mercy. He didn’t stop at creation. He didn’t stop at becoming one of us. He didn’t even stop at dying for us. But this God has taken on the humiliation of becoming bread for us to eat. He will sit in our guts, right in the center of us, and be digested, just so He can become part of every inch of our self. He will get stuck to the roof of our mouths, just so our breath smells like Him when we speak. He will become less than us, so that we may become more than us.
We deser ve none of it.
When you are at Mass, when you read Scripture in the silence of your home, when you wake to the purple sunrises of deep winter and feel your heart stir, remember this God who has made us and offers us every moment as gift. May this Year of Mercy awaken us to the mystery of our redemption.
the year of mercy
21
