All of us can remember where we were when the planes began to hit the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon, and finally the crash of United 93 in Shanksville, PA. I was in the seminary at the time. I was having coffee with some of the brothers getting ready to begin my daily chores for the day, when our rector came and told us a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. My first thoughts were, “it’s probably a little piper plane or something of that nature and probably lost control.” However, when we went to watch the news it sure didn’t look like a piper plane. Shortly after another plane hit the second tower. I thought I was watching video replay. I was in shock, as all of us were. I had so many feelings running through me, sadness, shock, anger, and even rage. I had a typical male response in my heart, “Someone will pay for this, and we are going to war.”
After 10 years my thoughts have changed in and that I do not so much think of revenge, but rather, the unbreakable strength of Americans, or of any human being for that matter who tries to live virtuously. I think now of all the brave firemen, police officers, and first responders who gave so much to save others. I think of all the civilians who were lost that day, and the many of them who helped others to safety at their risk of their own safety. I think of all of our soldiers who have been serving and continue to do so and the harms way they put themselves in for me whom they don’t even know. And I also think about forgiveness, the most difficult thing that Jesus asks of me. I beg him not to ask this of me. I can forgive being made fun of, being the jest of a joke, ridiculed, or even betrayed, but not this. In a great movie, Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan, Kahn says to Capt. Kirk, “Revenge is dish best served cold.”And for my enemies I wanted that dish to be freezing. And yet, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves” (Confucius).
The Gospel today tells us I must forgive not once or twice, but always. And what must I forgive? We must forgive all, even the worst of crimes. Please do not misunderstand me. If someone is guilty of a crime, we must judge and meet out the appropriate sentence. Jesus wants us to keep order in society, to keep society safe, we must be just. What Jesus is demanding is that we make no eternal judgments on someone’s soul and that we do not harbor vengeance. The typical human response or instinct is to think of oneself or one’s own group as innocent. We, for the most part do not place ourselves in the biblical stories that we hear or read as the ones who are being corrected by Jesus or the ones who are guilty. We are not totally free from sin or totally innocent. What would American Indians say of us, especially the ones who lived between the 17th and 18th centuries in North America? We were guilty of some terrible atrocities. After we were attacked by the Japanese in Pearl Harbor they became out mortal enemies and we exacted much more than tooth for tooth, eye for eye, they dropped conventional bombs – though cowardly, but we dropped atomic ones. Somehow though we are now friends, they are our allies as we are theirs. If Japan were attacked we would respond quickly and they for us. How did that happen after we both proclaimed the other to be our mortal enemies? Forgiveness!
If were we to ask a person from Japan or an American, say back in 1950, “Do you think we will ever be allies, and not only allies but good friends one day, what do you think their response would have been?”
I want to share with you a story about unbelievable forgiveness, almost unimaginable. St. Maria Gorreti died from multiple stab wounds at the hands of Alessandro Serenelli, the man who tried to rape her. She died a martyr because she refused to have relations with him for love of Jesus. Serenelli was a minor at the time and was only given a 30 year sentence. Eventually he began to pray and upon his release he visited Maria’s mother asking for forgiveness. She granted it because her daughter on her death bed granted Serenelli forgiveness and the mother felt she could do no different. Serenelli himself entered a monastery and devoted his life to prayer for his sins and he prayed to Maria, whom he called, “my little saint.”When Maria was canonized a saint, Serenelli was there standing with her family and going to mass with her family side by side receiving our Lord in the Eucharist. The reason there is such great love here is because a little girl poured out her soul to Jesus, not only for herself but even for her murderer. “As Maria lay dying, when the parish priest of Nettuno brought her Holy Viaticum and asked whether she forgave Alessandro, she replied, “Yes, I forgive him and want him to be in paradise with me one day.” From the mouths of babes! Jesus himself from his cross cried out, “Forgive them Father for they do not know what they do!”
Jesus demands the same of us. Jesus demands forgiveness since we are all sinners. I know we did not fly planes into buildings, nor torture anyone, nor murder anyone, but there is one thing we did do that was worse. You and I drove the nails through Jesus’ hands and feet, we placed the crown of thorns on his head, we opened up his side, we made him carry that cross and eventually die on it. Yes, you and me. Again, I am not saying that we should do nothing. I am not a total pacifist. If you fly planes into buildings there will be repercussions, justice will be served. What I am saying is that at some point we must begin to forgive, even when people do not ask for it. Serenelli did not ask Maria for forgiveness, but she gave it while dying. We did not ask Jesus for forgiveness, but he gave it. Look at the power of forgiveness, it is immeasurable. Who would ever have thought that we and the Japanese would become good friends? Somewhere down the line people began to forgive and the power of forgiveness began to transcend a cowardly attack on Pearl Harbor and even transcend the unjust atomic bombings on Japan. I struggle like you to forgive and I wish Jesus did not ask this of me, but he has. What must we do? It is very difficult to even think it, but the same was true for a young girl named Maria, it was also true for a young man named Yeshua (Jesus), and so too for a people called Americans during and after 911, but if we do forgive the mercy and grace poured will be beyond our imaginations just as it was for Serenlli, as it was for our parents who lived through World War II, and hopefully the same will be true of us when the next generation looks to the example we will leave behind. Fr. John
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