Forgiveness
Last night I attended one of the more intense meetings of our parish JustFaith group. Our discussion brought to the table all manner of issues regarding the sanctity of life. We came to the realization that treating all human beings with the dignity and respect that our faith requires is challenging to say the least. As we neared the end of our meeting we wrestled with issues such as the question of whether just war is still possible in the modern world, what constitutes self defense and should Christians even defend themselves from our oppressors if we take Jesus as our standard? It was a discussion that in many ways left more questions than answers. One suggestion brought forth for living with a deep respect for life and human dignity was that we must learn to forgive. As I left our meeting I began to think about the ways that we learn to forgive, especially when we continually see terrible acts of violence committed in our world. We must not only speak words of forgiveness, but actively live it out each day.
As I have reflected upon the gift of forgiveness one memory in particular keeps coming to mind. On the morning of June 10, 2002, I received a call from a parishioner at Sacred Heart Cathedral whose son is a monk at Conception Abbey in Missouri. His son and I had been seminarians together there before he decided to join the monastic community. His father told me a gunman had been reported to have entered the Abbey and that shots had been fired. He had heard nothing from his son and was worried beyond belief. Later that day I would learn that the gunman had shot and killed two members of the community and wounded two more before entering the basilica church and taking his own life. Several of my brother priests and seminarians made the trip that week to Conception to pray with and support the community in their time of need. As we gathered for the wake service I was not sure how to feel. There was certainly sadness that permeated the monastery, but there was still the great peace that so characterizes Conception Abbey. Peace remained strong. Fr. Albert Bruecken began his reflection with the following words:
Monday, two monks were killed. The real tragedy here is not that Fr. Philip and Bro. Damian are dead. We all come to the monastery to die, and it begins in the novitiate with humble jobs like cleaning bathrooms. Every act of obedience is a dying to self in service of Christ as seen in the brothers in the monastery and the people who come here. We feel their loss, their seemingly senseless loss. But in the last analysis, that is not the real tragedy, because their lives and their faith in the resurrection prepared them for this moment. No, the real tragedy is that Lloyd Jeffress came here troubled and without peace, and he shot the very people who might have helped him find it.
Was he fighting depression? In Bro. Damian, he shot a man who had fought his own battle with depression and was winning. A man who though gruff in appearance was fragile himself and sensitive to others, who could laugh at himself and his foibles, and bring others into that circle of laughter and delight. In sharing his struggles and laughter one could find the beginning of a cure for depression.
Did Mr. Jeffress harbor a grudge against someone or something? Did he need to experience forgiveness and/or reconciliation? In Fr. Philip, he killed someone whom people sought out as a confessor and confidant, one who served as a father figure to many because of his wisdom and compassion which was experienced by many both young and old. That is the tragedy: that the peace of Christ which we have cultivated here for almost 130 years, he did not find, but only brought violence and destruction.
Abbot Gregory Polan continued along the same theme at the funeral liturgy the next day,
…I ask each of you to join me in prayer, not only for Fr. Philip and Bro. Damian, for Fr. Kenneth and Fr. Norbert, but also for Mr. Robert Lloyd Jeffress. When brutal deeds are enacted, it calls for heroic and radical forgiveness. Such acts of violence as happened here on Monday, could only have come from someone in desperate need of help. Hatred, anger, and an unwillingness to forgive only keep us crippled and bound by the evils that surround us. If we endure evil and do not allow it to conquer us, we will share in the victory of Jesus Christ, in the hidden life of the resurrection of Jesus.
As I listened to Fr. Albert and Abbot Gregory I was certainly struck by their words that communicated mercy, but even more by the way you could see that these were not empty words. Even in their grief over the loss of two of their brothers, they were still able to feel compassion for another. The way in which they responded to this tragedy is one of the finest examples of what it means to give witness to the Gospel that I have ever experienced. One has to wonder how they were able to attain such a high level of forgiveness.
Having lived right next to the Abbey for two years as a seminarian, I have some clues as to how they learned to forgive. My own relationship with this particular monastic community taught me that one of the most important ways of learning to follow Christ is in the ordinary encounters we have with one another. Living in community puts one in daily contact with others who irritate us, who try our patience, who are many times mean-spirited, rude, inconsiderate and just all around broken people. One has to learn how to forgive if one is to succeed in community life. Virtues such as humility, kindness and patience are all learned by practicing them in the small arenas of life first. St. Paul simply calls this love in his description found in the letter to the Corinthians:
Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. Love is never rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth. There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure. Love never fails. (1 Cor 13:4-8)
It was not hard to see these virtues at work in the monks of Conception, long before Lloyd Jeffress entered the halls of their home with a gun. The community had already laid the foundation for forgiveness through years of living together as broken and sinful men who had learned to rely on the compassion of God and of one another.
Christians pray daily in the Lord’s Prayer that God will forgive us as we forgive others. My hope is that we will continue to practice showing mercy to one another in the small things, so that when God calls upon us to forgive those whose sins seem to be the greatest, we will be prepared to do so with courage.
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