Wow! Did you hear what the Lord said: love your enemies…do good to those who hate you…bless those who curse you….pray for those who mistreat you…Stop judging…Stop condemning…Forgive even as you seek to be forgiven
Do we believe it? Even though we pray it all day long: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us!” Do we believe it?
Rita did. Rita Lotti, born in the little Umbrian hilltown of Cascia about 700 years ago.
In those days, Cascia was inhabited by the Italian equivalant of the Hattfields and the McCoys, as frequent conflicts and family rivalries were routinely settled by the rule of vendetta...that is, you kill one of ours, we kills two of yours. It was the ideal prescription for perpetuating violence.
Rita married Paolo Mancini, a good, if impetuous fellow, and they had two sons. The sons grew into their teens and one day as their father was returning from work he was ambushed and killed. Rita was overcome with grief, but even more by the fear that her two sons would seek to avenge their father’s death.
Only her tears and her begging kept them from seeking to kill their father’s killer. But her sorrows did not end there, for within a year both sons died from heart disease.
So there she was: within a year she had buried her whole family, and it all started with the murder of her husband. So did she seek revenge, did she become bitter, did she withdraw into a perpetual state of self-pity? No, she became a nun and dedicated the rest of her life to serving the poor and urging everyone she met to forgive, as God had forgiven them.
Saint Rita understood what the Lord meant by forgive!
And Pope Francis understood it as well: “The problem,” he wrote, “comes whenever we have to deal with a brother or sister who has even slightly offended us. The reaction is usually like in that parable when the offended man “seized his enemy by the throat and said, ‘Pay what you owe!’”
When we are indebted to others, we expect mercy; but when others are indebted to us, we demand justice! All of us do it.
But it is a reaction unworthy of Christ’s disciples, nor is it the sign of the follower of Jesus. Jesus teaches us to forgive and to do so limitlessly: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven”
The story is told of a meetings of Father Luigi Giussani and Bishop Eugenio Corecco, two of the founders of Communio e Liberazione. Bishop Eugenio was close to death and began to pray that his suffering would, in some way, prove fruitful in his ministry as a Bishop.
“The essential thing for a bishop,” he said, for “a pastor, or an abbot [the essential thing for each of them] is love. Love is what is fruitful, what changes and converts the people…merciful love. The world does not forgive. But mercy always begins loving again...There’s no greater miracle than discovering in yourself charity, a love that wasn’t there before.”
"What does love look like?” Saint Augustine once asked. “It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. It has the heart to forgive. That is what love looks like."
A mercy which is love for those who have no one else to love them. Loving not because someone is big or beautiful and can love me right back, but love for them precisely because the ugliness of their sin has betrayed me, wounded me, offended me.
Wow! Did you hear what the Lord said: love your enemies…do good to those who hate you…bless those who curse you….pray for those who mistreat you…Stop judging…Stop condemning…Forgive even as you seek to be forgiven
