Transcription of a talk given by Fr. Mike Russo

on August 25, 2002

to the Family Life Community General Assembly

Transcribed by Jenni Boudreaux; Please forgive any errors.

            I’m happy to be with you again to speak to you on probably the most perfect virtue of the Christian life and that is to be a person of forgiveness – to be able to forgive.  The most perfect prayer we have is the Our Father, and in the Our Father, there is one word that shouts out – and that is forgiveness – “…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Every time we pray this we are actually saying, “Forgive me, Lord, only to the degree that I forgive others.”  Do you really realize what this means?  How often have we prayed this prayer in our lifetime – a prayer that acknowledges that I will be forgiven only to the degree that I am able to forgive?  And so if we are harboring ill feelings for someone, if we are holding on to revenge and resentment, if we are refusing to let go, refusing to forgive, then every time we pray the Our Father, we are eternally condemning ourselves.

Jesus taught not only forgiveness of neighbor, he taught forgiveness of enemies.  Who are our enemies?  Maybe those who compete with us – spouses compete, neighbors compete, brothers and sisters compete, maybe you compete with one another.  And often in the competition, feelings are rubbed raw, and resentment builds up and soon a neighbor is secretly glad to see another neighbor’s misfortune.  How often have we heard it said of someone, “Well, that serves him right.”?  How often have we said of someone, “That serves him right.”?  Who are our enemies?  Maybe someone we secretly harbor ill feelings toward, someone who has hurt us in the past, a hurt that lingers, it will not go away, someone we disagree with which has caused a barrier between us, someone who is tempting us to fall into sin.  Who are our enemies?  And even more importantly, how do our enemies affect our spiritual life?

            You see, there are three ways to respond to an enemy.  First, we can retaliate.  I often tell the cute story of a man who was told by his doctor that he had rabies, and he had waited so long to go to the doctor that nothing could be done.  So after telling the sad news the doctor left and later he stopped back to check on the patient who was writing something on a piece of paper.  “Are you writing a will?” asked the doctor.  “No,” said the man, “I’m making a list of all the people I’m gonna go out and bite.”  You see, retaliation.  Our newspapers are full of stories of people who settle grievances with retaliation, but spiritually, it’s devastating.  It does permanent damage to us.  We become different; we become twisted and evil.  And many Church people live this way.  And people in the community are watching us.  And we’re scandalizing them.  A young man had a love/hate relationship with his father.  He tried desperately to hurt his father in a business deal.  And when his mother learned of it and reprimanded him, he answered, “Mom, I just wanted to beat him, just once I wanted to beat him.”  His mother said, “Son, you haven’t beaten him; you have become him.”  Retaliation is always spiritually damaging.

            And then another way to respond to our enemies is to hold resentment.  Again, it’s one of the most common spiritual problems among Church-going people.  You are all nice people.  You would not openly harm anyone.  But why can we hold a grudge?  And the problem is, again, not what this does to someone else, but what it does to us.  We become cold and bitter and unforgiving.  And we become negative.  No one likes to be around a negative person.  More than any type of physical suffering is the terrible agony of someone who is trapped in bitterness, someone who is so preoccupied with their hurt that they lose their freedom, they lose their self-direction and they are miserable.  What an awful way to live.  Resentment does more damage to us than to any enemy.  When we hate our enemies, we give them power over us:  power over our sleep, power over our peace of mind, power over our blood pressure, power over our health.  We take them on vacation with us; we take them to our jobs.  They influence the tone of our voice.  Our enemies would dance for joy if they knew how our hatred of them was tearing us apart.  And yet we cannot deny that the most natural thing in the world is to be vengeful, is to want to return hurt with more hurt, but unless we are able to believe the unbelievable – that tiny piece of bread is Almighty God, that’s unbelievable.  Unless we are able to believe the unbelievable and to forgive the unforgivable, then we do not have God in our lives.  We’re fakes.  We’re phonies.  And it shows its face.  To believe the unbelievable and to forgive the unforgivable.

There’s an old saying, “He who understands much, forgives much.”  So often when we see where a person has been, when we hear their side of the story, then we become a little less willing to condemn.  How often in my own experience as a priest I’ve heard stories from a distraught wife, stories that would make me very disturbed over an unkind and cruel husband, and then days later the husband is in my office and a whole other side emerges – a man with deep wounds, a man with deep hurts, trapped in weakness, not wanting to ruin his family, but not knowing how to love them.  And so if we are to forgive one another, we have to first listen to one another.  I’m gonna repeat that.  If we are to forgive one another, we have to first listen to one another.  And when we learn of our enemies past, when we learn of our enemies upbringing, sometimes we will be amazed how they manage to be as good as they actually are.  When we see where a person has been, we’re less willing to condemn them.  That was the prayer of Jesus, as the nails were about to penetrate his hands, “Father, they just don’t know any better.  Somehow they have lost their way.  They don’t know what they really do.”  To say, “I cannot forgive,” to say, “I will not forgive,” is to refuse to be like Christ, and we become unworthy to pray the Our Father. 

So, don’t curse it, don’t nurse it, don’t rehearse it, disperse it, and you will reverse it.  You want me to say that again, don’t you?  Don’t curse it, don’t nurse it, don’t rehearse it, disperse it, and you will reverse it.  Forgiveness is the apex of Christian perfection – it is the distinguishing mark of what it means to be a child of God.  Is it hard?  Extremely hard.  But if we call ourselves Christian, we cannot have enemies.  The only enemy in the life of a Christian is sin.

Before we can reconcile our relationships with one another, we have to first reconcile our relationship with God, and it all basically comes down to one question – the last time you have been to Confession.  Now normally I would give a whole spill on Confession.  I probably don’t have to do that with you because you all take your spiritual life seriously and hopefully you do go to Confession regularly.

The examined life … Now every night before I go to bed, I ask a question, “Lord, what do You think of me?  How am I doing?”  Is there anything more tragic than an unexamined life?  “Lord, what do You think of me?  How am I doing?”  And if ever we’re not sure about what to confess, if ever we’re wondering where our sinfulness lies, then ask the people who live with you, ask the people who work with you.  Because if we’re honest, we’re going to find attitudes and behaviors that make us different from Jesus.  To the worldly, the little faults may not be all that serious, but to those who want to be holy, venial sins disturb us because we want to become saints, not just to get to Heaven, but to have a high place in Heaven.  And Jesus taught over again that there are degrees of happiness in Heaven.  So we must try to make our Confessions not the grocery list, but a thorough laying of our life at the feet of Jesus.  How do we learn this?  We go to Confession.  We keep going and the more we go, the better we get at it.  In the seminary, we were taught, “How do you become a good Confessor?”  You go to Confession.  So the same rule applies even for priests.  And so what if you confess the same thing over and over and over again?  So what?  When you weed a garden, you know that next week that weed is gonna be right back.  But if you don’t weed the garden out regularly, the weeds take over the garden.  And that’s how sin is in our life.  Even though, “Yes, Lord, I probably will mess up again in human weakness, it I do not lay this sin at Your feet regularly, that sin will take over my life and consume it.”

We have to redefine our understanding of Confession.  When we go to the gas station, we go primarily to get gas, but we also go to change the oil and put air in the tires and sometimes we go to get the car washed.  Well, when we go to Confession we go primarily to get washed, but many don’t see it as also getting gas to help us go.  If we get gas only once a year, we’re gonna run out.  Oh, we can go if we get out of the car and push, so we push the car the whole year.  And everyone is complaining because it’s hard, and things are moving too slowly.  So in the Confessional, God says, “Let Me give you some gas to help you go, to help make life a little easier for you.”  But we’re so afraid.  And we’re afraid because of our pride.  And we’re afraid because of our shame.  Yet it’s amazing how people will readily tell their best friend what they would never tell a priest.  Or, they’ll call up Oprah Winfrey and tell the whole nation what they are too afraid to tell a priest.  God is not interested in guilt.  God is not interested in shame.  God is interested in sorrow.  And no priest thinks badly of a person who comes to Confession; it’s just the opposite.  We think more highly of them.

Scripture gives us two examples of sorrow.  First, St. Peter – can you imagine anything more horrible than denying Jesus three times, and all the more terrible because Peter knew better.  Peter saw the miracles.  Peter saw the Lord transfigured on the mountain.  Peter knew, he knew in his heart that Jesus was the Son of God.  And still he denied Him, and a short while after the denial, Jesus is being led to the dungeon of the high priest’s palace and we are told the Lord turned and looked at Peter.  And that look that had brought the Love of God to a desperate world, that look which was an invitation to repentance saved Peter from despair and reminded him that there is no sin greater than the Love of God.

The second type of sorrow in Scripture is Judas.  He, too, received the look of Love from the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane in the midst of one of the darkest moments of Salvation history.  Jesus turns to Judas and says, “My friend.”  You see, calling Judas, “Friend,” even to the end.  “My friend, why are you here?”  And we are told later that Judas expressed regret for his crime.  When he realized what he had done, he brought back the thirty pieces of silver.  But the tragedy is that, unlike Peter, Judas had no hope that he could be pardoned.  He lacked the humility to go to Jesus face to face.  He lacked the humility to go to Confession.

So you see the difference between Peter and Judas.  Both men are betrayers; both men are remorseful.  But the remorse of Judas stays within.  He remains alone.  He was sad and heavy and burdened for what he had done, but he does not confess to Christ.  And yet Judas could have become one of the pillars of the Church.  Can you just picture it?  The conversion of Judas – he would have knelt down at the Cross, at the nailed feet of Jesus and said, “Forgive me, Lord, forgive me.”  And he would have been forgiven, and Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and all the great Christian artists would have painted this scene.  In every major city in the world there would be a Church named St. Judas the Penitent.  But it didn’t happen because Judas refused to go to Jesus; he did it his way, by himself.  And people who refuse to be faithful to the Sacraments, who refuse to go to Confession, are only repeating the tragedy of Judas, insisting that they do it their way.

Most of us here are not grave sinners.  It’s the little things – impatience, uncharitable in our thoughts and deeds, faults in our conversations and attitudes, lax in our piety, frivolous and uncontrolling in our language, taking the good name of our neighbor lightly.  And maybe we are aware of these weaknesses and perhaps even accuse ourselves in regular Confession, but where we so often fail is that we do not seriously repent of them.  We do not make use of the means to avoid them in the future, and so, little by little, the soul loses the splendor of its beauty, and God becomes increasingly distant.  The little things – the little things weaken the life of Grace and incline us toward bigger things.  No sin, especially the big ones, is an isolated event.  They all have a prehistory.  Little becomes big.  Adam and Eve did not sin when they ate the apple.  They sinned the moment they began to look at it.  And that glance, however innocent it may have been, however curious, that tiny glance, that look away was the beginning of the loss of Paradise.  Like Adam and Eve, we all from time to time mess up, because there’s a little bad in the best of us and a little good in the worst of us.  And that little bit of bad in us, however little it may be, has within it the potential to destroy our lives and to devastate those we love.

There’s a silly story about a fellow who had spent his whole life in the desert, and one day he came to visit a friend in town.  The man who had lived in the desert had never before seen a train or the tracks they run on.  Well, one day while standing in the middle of the railroad tracks, he hears this whistle, but he doesn’t know what it is.  Well, predictably, he’s hit, but he survives – a few broken bones and some bruises.  After recovering, he was at a friend’s house attending a party and, while in the kitchen, he suddenly heard the teakettle whistling.  So, he grabbed a baseball bat and battered the teakettle into a lump of metal.  And his friend, hearing the ruckus, rushed into the kitchen and asked, “Why did you ruin my good teakettle?”  The desert man replied, “Man, you gotta kill these things when they’re small!”  It’s the way sin works in our lives.  Anger and resentment and self-destructive habits, we have to deal with them while they are small before we become captive to them.

God can change the human heart.  People can change.  We’re hearing a lot about the Church’s approach to pedophilia priests.  People can change.  Moses was a murderer.  St. Paul was arrogant and blasphemous.  King David, from whose line would be born the very Son of God, committed murder and adultery.  To believe Scripture that there is rejoicing in Heaven over the sinner who comes home is to first believe that sin is serious business, but that repentance is possible.  Mortal sin sends no one to hell.  Unrepented mortal sin sends us to hell.

I close with the story of a widow during the First World War who lost her only son and her husband, and she was especially bitter because the neighbor who had five sons lost none of them.  And one night, while this woman’s grief was so severe, she had a dream.  An angel stood before her and said, “Your son will be given back to you for ten minutes.  Now what ten minutes will you choose?  Will you have him back as  a little baby, as a dirty-faced little boy, as a student completing high school, or as the young soldier who marched off to war?”  And the mother thought a few minutes and then, in her dream, told the angel that she would choose none of these.  “Let me have him back,” she said, “when, as a little boy, in a moment of anger, he doubled up his fists and shook them at me and said, ‘Mommy, I hate you!  I hate you!’”  And then she said to the angel, “After a short while, his anger subsided, and he came back to me, his dirty little face stained with tears, and as he put his arms around me, he cried, ‘Mommy, I’m sorry.  And I promise never to be bad again.  I love you with all my heart.’  Let me have him back then,” the mother cried, “because I never loved my little boy more than at the moment when he came back to me.”

This is how God feels about each of us.  And that’s why even the angels rejoice whenever one who has been lost is found.  Forgiveness is what God is all about.  His beautiful generosity to us is most profoundly expressed in His ways of forgiving us.  And if we are to be followers of His Son, then we have to be people who know how to go up to someone and say, “I’m sorry,” and mend broken relationships – especially in a community like yours because already people look at you with suspicion.  They think you’re fanatical, different – all good things; we live in a world where we should be fanatical.  But if you are having tensions amongst yourselves, they are looking and they are noticing.  And you’re doing grave damage to the Body of Christ.  And it’s so easy to fix.  You extend your hand and say, “Brother, let’s walk together to the Face of God.”  So, sometimes that means you have to initiate.  You have to be the one to extend your hand and you have to be willing to receive the slap on the face.  And so you extend your hand again and again.  What did Jesus say?  Not seven times but seventy times seven times.  In order to understand one another, we have to first listen to one another, so if there are tensions, that is the key ingredient.  Listen.  Listen.  And know that people are watching.  And you can either lead them or distract them.  Because you are different; you are the leaders in this community.  You should take the lead, and one way in which we lead is by being people who are able to say to one another, “I’m sorry.”  You all come from big families, most of you.  How many times do we have to say, to our children or our spouse, “I’m sorry.”  So all the more do you have to say it to one another because families don’t get it right always.  So, I pray for you and I ask you to pray for me and I wish you all the best in your endeavors to become holy and become examples in Abbeville of good Roman Catholicism.  God bless you.

Living Father, we thank You for Your Son and His day of Resurrection, and all that that means to us, that we are people of the Resurrection, we are people of life and love and hope and joy.  And we ask You to shower these graces upon our community that You give us the courage and the strength to follow Your Will and to die to self.  We ask this through Christ Our Lord.  Amen.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.