From June 9-13, 2016, our class of diaconate aspirants had our annual retreat. These photos are from our time at the Chiara Center (Franciscan Life Center) in Riverton, Illinois, just outside of Springfield.
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Starting this afternoon, I’ll be offline and away through Sunday for our annual diaconate formation retreat. I’m looking forward to this time away with my brother classmates as we prepare to seek candidacy this fall, and as we join with the class ahead of us who are on their final retreat before ordination in two weeks.
After the roller coaster ride that was last weekend… playing music at a funeral, Sacred Heart devotions, and my final two Masses as music director, including a baptism and a first communion… leaving for retreat this weekend surely constitutes a valid #ThankfulThursday!
I’m grateful for the opportunity for this retreat, and for the accommodations that the diocese is providing for us at the Chiara Center (Franciscan Life Center) in Springfield.
I will be keeping you – my family and friends – and your intentions in my prayers during this time. Please keep me in yours.
I have my copy of Coming Down the Mountain (affiliate link, if you’re interested in purchasing a copy) ready for when I return home. I think I’ll get a good run out of it this time.
Our formation team and the class ahead of us kept telling us that the church at the Chiara Center is amazing… one of the most beautiful in our diocese. I can’t wait to see it in person! Here are a few pictures of St. Francis Church at the Chiara Center that members of the class ahead of us posted last night (their retreat started a day earlier):
Taken by Mike Melton two years ago (that’s Neil Suermann sitting in the church):
Taken by Rick Schnetzler last night:
I made it through a really rough last weekend as music director & organist at my home parish. My eyes didn’t water too much (but I’ll admit they did a little) and my handkerchief didn’t get too wet.
There’s a weird feeling of emptiness that I kept feeling. So many thoughts that kept running through my heart and mind… stuff like:
Don’t cry… You’ll be okay… You’re really going to miss this… I’m feeling so empty… Jesus, fill me up… Jesus, please fill me… I need your grace… Help me… Don’t look at them… Now they’re crying… Fill me up…
It kept coming down to me praying, “Fill me up”, as my chest felt empty, and then a feeling of peace that would wash over me. A few times, I knew I heard a voice speaking to me, “Something greater is in store.”
Then I’d have thoughts like:
Why are you having such a hard time with this? This was never YOURS anyway. This isn’t for you. This is for Him. Thank you. Fill me up… Something greater is in store.
It was a blessing to be joined by so many friends and singers who had been with me through the years… (Art would have been there too, but they had already booked a family vacation through the weekend). This is my music family:
And Suzanne brought the boys up to the loft for both Masses… we got one last picture of me with the boys at the organ:
As it was written, though – as it relates to my music ministry, “It is finished.”
I look forward to my first diaconate retreat this coming weekend.
I trust that something greater is in store.
For centuries, “the problem of evil” has vexed those who believe in God and given those who do not believe a strong argument against God’s existence. Put simply, the problem of evil begs an explanation for the existence of pain and evil within the creation of a God who is supposedly all powerful, all knowing, and all good. As Brian Davies explains, it “is commonly seen as the problem of how the existence of God can be reconciled with the pain, suffering, and moral evil which we know to be facts of life.”[note]Brian Davies, “The Problem of Evil,” New Blackfriars 73, no. 862 (1991): 357.[/note] It is reasonable that if there is evil, God knows about it, could stop it, and would want to stop it. However, evil exists in our world. This problem was one of many Saint Augustine needed to reason his way through on his own path to Christianity, eventually settling upon an explanation that still serves us well today.
Prior to his conversion, Augustine associated with the Manichees and espoused their belief that good and evil were forces of similar, infinite, real substances matched in battle here in our existence. Furthermore, the evil we encounter is the result of that battle in our natural world.[note]Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 2001), 89.[/note] One modern Manichean construct that assists in understanding this position is found in the Star Wars films as the conflict between the light and dark sides of “the Force.”[note]Daniel Kolb, lecture on Augustine (Springfield, IL: Villa Maria Catholic Life Center, 9 April 2016).[/note] For a period of time, Augustine explored and considered this belief. Eventually, though, he settled upon his own explanation which helped him return to the Catholic faith. We still reference his explanation today since it established the key concepts for the discussion of evil in western philosophy.[note]Judith Chelius Stark, “The Problem of Evil: Augustine and Ricoeur,” Augustinian Studies, 13 (1982): 111.[/note]
Augustine’s explanation of evil is rooted in its ontological nature (the understanding of its essence and existence): evil is not itself a substance, but rather, evil is the corruption of a good substance. Augustine accepts that God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good, and God created all things. He begins to explain evil by clarifying that creation is from God, not of God, therefore creation does not necessarily share in God’s perfect nature. To the contrary, he observes that the changeable world of nature is imperfect. It has things that cease to be within it, and he starts to consider that created things have a tendency toward corruption or non-existence. From this observation, he further considers evil as a corruption, a lack of form or lack of some ideal state. He then proposes that corruptibility in nature is not of God’s nature, but it is inherent in God’s creation because God created all things out of nothing. As a result, creation will have a tendency back toward nothingness – corruptibility – which is the nature and root of evil.[note]Stark, “The Problem of Evil: Augustine and Ricoeur,” 114.[/note] Augustine writes, in The Nature of Good:
All corruptible natures, therefore, would not be natures at all if they were not made by God, and they would not be corruptible if they were made of him, because they would be what he is. And so they exist with whatever limit, whatever form, whatever order they have, because it is God who has made them. But they are not immutable, because that whence they have been made is nothing.[note]Augustine, The Nature of Good 10, in The Manichean Debate: The Works of Saint Augustine, a Translation for the 21st Century, trans. Roland Teske, S.J. (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 2006), 327.[/note]
Augustine’s explanation of the problem of evil presents us with the idea that evil is present in nature because of the fact that God created nature out of nothing, and evil is the presence of some natural corruption based in nature’s tendency back toward nothingness.
Over time, philosophers have added their own thinking atop Augustine’s foundation. In The Problem of Evil: A Solution from Science, Patricia Williams proposes that even advances in science lend credibility to some of Augustine’s thinking. She points to the second law of thermodynamics, which sets forth that closed physical systems become increasingly disordered over time, as necessary for life. Death, disorder, and corruption are scientific necessities of creation itself. Further, she puts forth the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and weak and strong interactions of nuclear elements) which allow material existence to be, as a necessary trade-off for creation itself. “Natural evil, the evil caused by earthquake, fire, and flood, occurs because planet Earth is subject to these laws.”[note]Patricia A. Williams, “The Problem of Evil: A Solution from Science,” Zygon 36, no. 3 (2001): 572.[/note] She provides a wonderful analogy of how God, in his goodness, chose to create, even within the real confines of the material with which he created, paralleling God’s creativity with an artist’s creativity:
Artists choose their medium and its laws, then use the very constraints imposed by the medium and its laws to be creative. For example, an author may compose poetry or novels. Poetry has its own set of rules, and rules within rules. Novels have rules unlike those of poetry. Among novels, detective novels have different rules than historical ones. But all the rules are made by human beings, and following them produces the distinctive poem or novel the author wishes. God is like an author. God makes the rules and the rules within the rules. Which rules God makes depends on the desired creation. For this world, the main rules seem to be the second law of thermodynamics and the four fundamental forces. There might have been other worlds with other rules. But these rules turn out to be the ones for creating a world inhabited by creatures for whom morality is to be a central and serious matter.[note]Ibid., 573.[/note]
In nature, when we expect eyesight but find that the eye is corrupted in its natural state, we might say the blind person is beset by the evil of blindness. If we expect life, but the body is plagued by its ultimate corruption, natural death, we might say the person has fallen to the evil of death. Augustine suggests that these corruptions in nature constitute evil, the necessary reality stemming from the nature of creation.
There are, of course, situations which we would call “evil” that are imparted upon man by other men. These situations beg reasonable people to question God’s all powerful, all knowing, and all good nature. Murder, genocide, even involuntary and accidental acts of violence call this question to mind every day via news headlines and impacted friends and neighbors. The existence of human beings with free will introduces a complexity to the problem of evil, and one might wonder how Augustine’s explanation from the corruptibility of nature applies to these situations of moral evil. Augustine explains “this liability to corruption also has a moral dimension” and “these two dimensions – the ontological and the moral – are intrinsically joined.”[note]Stark, “The Problem of Evil: Augustine and Ricoeur,” 116.[/note] In this way, Augustine proposes that evil can be introduced or natural corruptibility can even be accelerated or exacted by man’s moral choice and resulting action. By choosing to impart man with free will, God introduced the potential for man to choose to do good or evil. Augustine even observes that God created all men as good, and “the villains themselves are fit only for these lower regions [of God’s world] in the measure that they are unlike [God], but for the higher when they come to resemble [God] more closely.”[note]Augustine, The Confessions, 130.[/note] He reinforces the idea that evil, in the moral sense, is still not a substance, but rather a corruption, or the lack of some good:
I inquired then what villainy might be, but I found no substance, only the perversity of a will twisted away from you, God, the supreme substance, toward the depths – a will that throws away its life within and swells with vanity abroad.[note]Ibid.[/note]
To Augustine, free will necessarily presents man with an opportunity to choose to initiate or cause evil to occur. The fact that man has free will opens the door to evil acts. Brian Davies carries this thinking forward, explaining:
In creating people, therefore, God was faced with an alternative. He could either have created a world lacking moral evil, or he could have created a world where moral evil was a genuine possibility. If he had created the former he could not have created a world containing free agents. In fact, he created the latter, and this means that there is a genuine and unavoidable possibility of moral evil. In creating the world he did create God was making the better choice, because a world containing free agents is better than a world without them.[note]Davies, “The Problem of Evil,” 360.[/note]
Or, as Williams simply states in The Problem of Evil, evil “is a necessary part of a humanity whose capacities make human beings moral beings.”[note]Williams, “The Problem of Evil: A Solution from Science,” 571.[/note]
Augustine’s response to the problem of evil includes explanations of natural evil and of moral evil, those evils caused by the villainy of men exacted upon each other of their own free will. For centuries, it has served theologians, philosophers, the faithful, and those seeking answers, and some have even built upon it with modern scientific knowledge. But it does not present a suggestion of how men of good will could work to slow or work against some of the corruption of nature. For those answers, one could to turn to the theology of Augustine’s Christian faith, which beckons men to action. The Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which a traveler stops to help a stranger who had fallen prey to the evil of robbers (Luke 10:29-37 NABRE) is presented by Jesus as an illustration of how a man of good will might help offset evil. Jesus presents this parable in his conversation with the scholar of the law about the greatest commandment, to “love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:25-28) The moral choice to love and treat others as yourself has a balancing effect on evil that might be initiated by men of lesser moral character.
As Augustine helped us understand, evil is not a real thing of substance, but it is a reality of the natural world God created, due to creation’s very composition and rules. God accepted these rules as the trade-off for the material of creation and for the possibility of a creation that affords man his free will. In this sense, evil is not a problem per se, but an opportunity for a higher understanding of the reality of our transient, corruptible nature, and of hope and contemplation of that which is perfect, God himself.
Submitted May 22, 2016, for the course “Introduction to Philosophy: Pre-Theology for Deacon Candidates”, Instructor: Daniel Kolb, Ph.D.
Appropriate for a #ThankfulThursday, because of how thankful I am for this chapter of my life…
Dear Holy Family parish – Father Jeff, Father Stone, musicians, singers, staff, parishioners, friends…
Music ministry at Holy Family has been at the heart of my life, my faith life, and my family for as long as I can remember. I remember taking my first 16-key Casio keyboard to St. Margaret Mary School in 2nd grade to try to pluck out John Foley’s One Bread, One Body by ear for show and tell. In middle school, Mr. Vizer successfully talked me into playing a duet with him at the school Christmas program.
In 7th grade, I remember John Huff asking me, after seeing me at a piano recital, if I’d come play with the guitar group at the church. Shortly thereafter, he asked if he could put a microphone in front of me. I said, “I only sing in the shower,” and he replied, “I could rig a shower up over you too.”
For six years I played with the guitar groups, and then in my college years I fell away from the faith a bit. Years later, after I had returned to the Church, I heard that a priest that I had connected with was heading to my home parish of Holy Family. I remember calling Jeanne Schnefke and asking if the guitar group was still around and could use a keyboardist again. I remember her immediate and enthusiastic “Yes!”
Within the next year, we had formed an offshoot “ensemble” which started taking on more responsibilities around the parish. I remember when we were starting and Carol Reagan called and said, “We’ll all be there to sing with you. You just tell us when and where.” I remember Frances & Mario Rossi & Rich Koerper’s, “You want to try a youth-oriented group? Let’s try it!” The next 15 years or so, until today, have been a whirlwind of joy, happiness, friendship, and accomplishment in ministry. I remember magnificent Advent concerts joining our adult choir & ensemble. I remember re-meeting Suzanne here after a Wednesday night practice and Mass, leading to our marriage and family. I remember Christmas Eves and Triduums.
You don’t really keep count when starting on a journey like this, but some rough math tells me that in the last 15 years, I’ve had the honor of helping lead our community in song at some 1,500 liturgies – Sunday Masses, weddings, funerals, graduations, Confirmations, Anointing Masses, and more.
Now, I must say “farewell” to this chapter of my life in order to move on to the next to which I believe I am called. As I progress into years two through four of the diaconate formation program, I am excited to go where our diocese chooses to send me to help me grow in my parish experiences and pastoral ministry. This change carries the bitterness of a “goodbye” to my music ministry at Holy Family, but the happiness and excitement of the future that could come.
I will miss climbing the stairs to the choir loft a few times each week. I will miss the friends in the choir loft – and now my own sons playing instruments and singing with the ensemble and choir. I will miss our parish community, and our liturgies, and hearing the sound of you singing along loudly from the pews. (Yes, we can often hear it in the loft!)
THANK YOU to all of those who came and went through the years: Carol, John, Judy, Mario & Frances, Carolyn, Art, Kristin, Katie, Tracy, Jacqui, Suzanne, Leta, Kathy, Steve, Charlie, Jeff & Gay, Jeff, Doug, Maggi, Mary Jo, Richard, Misty, Justin, Joe, Chris, Thomas & Matthew. THANK YOU to Pat, my partner in music and ministry, and the adult choir. THANK YOU to the pastors I’ve had the pleasure of serving. THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us, especially Suzanne and our boys and our whole family.
Holy Family is my home – it will remain our family’s home. I’ll just be away learning more about how to help serve our Church in new ways. I won’t be gone entirely, though, and still look forward to being around from time to time at Masses, events, dinners, school events, and the like.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity to be a servant – a servant in music ministry – to you for so many wonderful years. Know that you remain in my daily prayers, and I beg you to please keep me in yours.
I recall the words of a long-time friend of mine, Father Steve Arisman, who said something like, “I don’t believe in saying ‘goodbye’ – I say, ‘I will see you in the Eucharist.” Because when we are gathered at Mass, no matter where we are or when it is, we are all joined together in the mystical Body of Christ formed through the ages. I will see you in the Eucharist!
With love and prayers, Michael
With prayer and thanksgiving for all of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice of their lives in service of our country.
O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry, our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die; the walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide, take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.
From all that terror teaches, from lies of tongue and pen, from all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men, from sale and profanation of honor, and the sword, from sleep and from damnation, deliver us, good Lord!
Tie in a living tether the prince and priest and thrall, bind all our lives together, smite us and save us all; in ire and exultation aflame with faith, and free, lift up a living nation, a single sword to thee.
Words: Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1906 Music: King’s Lynn Meter: 76 76 D
Signpost in the Mountain – iStock.com/Mimadeo
Fifteen or so years ago, when I had returned to church and was starting to seriously discern God’s will for my life and vocation, a certain song hit a chord with me and became deeply intertwined with my prayer life and discernment. The song was Jesse Manibusan’s Open My Eyes:
There were nights that I drove around, praying the words. One night in particular, after leaving an evening of coffee and Scrabble with Suzanne, “praying” that song opened my heart to God and helped me clearly “hear” and understand that marriage with Suzanne was my first vocation.
I’ve always been fortunate enough to stay keenly tuned into the little “signs” that pop up around me in everyday life, and I act a lot by gut (within reason) based upon those signs. I could list countless examples of signs that came at just the right time to help me understand that something was right, or that I was heading in the right direction, or that I should explore a new opportunity.
I firmly believe that being “tuned in” to signs and using them in one’s discernment is a key element of a strong faith life, and a confirmation of the presence and fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Fast forward more than a dozen years… in October of 2013, I headed to Springfield, IL, to the gathering space at our diocesan cathedral, for an “information session” on the permanent diaconate and the formation process. As we sat down and the presenters started to play a video about the diaconate, the video opened with Open My Eyes as the background music.
A sign. Among others that day, this one stood out as another signpost along my journey, that I was heading where God intended.
I applied, continued the process, was accepted as a candidate, started in the program, and am now coming close to completing my first year of the five year formation program.
It hasn’t been easy – one of the first classes we took was on discernment, and it has provided useful frameworks and encouragement for ongoing discernment. But recently, as a couple of my classmates have left our class, discerning that this isn’t a call for them right now, it has continued to awaken my own doubts and questions, and continued to push me to more deeply discern my own calling.
A few weeks ago, when I went for my early morning time with my spiritual director, I first attended morning Mass at his parish church. As I sat down after the Gospel and homily, pondering what I wanted to talk with him about as it related to my own questions, doubts, and discernment, the musician announced the hymn at Offertory:
Just what I needed. Yet again, God provided a sign. A flood of memories of a life of discernment, and perspective on a life of mission and calling, flowed back into my mind and my heart.
The sign told me that I was right where God willed me to be today. And the journey continues, and I continue to watch for the signs.
Do you use “signposts” like these from God in your journey? What kinds of signs have meant the most to you in your life? Is there a very memorable important one from your own journey?
Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, Poussin (1653)
Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? – First Reading (Is 43:18-19a)
St. Paul opens his Letter to the Romans speaking of those who “became vain in their reasoning” and fall into idolatry and many sorts of adulterous and unnatural acts of the body, even calling them “heartless”. (Rom 1:24-32 NABRE) He continues referring to this hardness of heart later in his letter, teaching that “he has mercy upon whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills.” (Rom 9:18)
But Christ came to begin something new. The Word, the second person of the Trinity, was the fullness of Truth and the fullness of reason. He was, in fact, the personification of the truth of natural law written into our human hearts.
He knew the temptations that we each face, and the falls that we may occasionally have in this life, and He came to redeem us from them.
And in today’s Gospel, the story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus comes face to face with one of us with hardened heart…
The Pharisees press Jesus…
“Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” – John 8:5-11
God himself comes face to face with a heart hardened with sin, and shows himself as what he is: truth, love, and mercy.
In fact, he also faces the crowd with hardened hearts and asks them to consider softening them. He asks them to drop the stones from their hands and accept a softening of their own stony hearts.
A frequent reading in the Liturgy of the Hours through Lent has long been one of my favorite passages of the Bible. It speaks precisely of God’s desire to take our hardened hearts and replace them with new hearts, hearts of the flesh of truth.
I will sprinkle clean water over you to make you clean; from all your impurities and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them. (Ezek 36:25-27)
Oh, how I love this passage. How I love the gentle mercy of Jesus. How I love the idea of my own heart, hardened by sin, being made new by Jesus. Softened, re-made into a heart of flesh.
I, like every other man and woman, have fallen short in living the life of grace that God gave me in the waters of Baptism. I have fallen out of relationship with God.
I am thankful that, through the redemption won on the cross, Jesus is able to extend his hand, turn back those who would stone me, and offer me a new heart of flesh. I long to be in His truth and grace, and to keep His commands.
Praise God for the gift of mercy in reconciliation, which allows us to return to Him and sing, as the Psalmist, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.” (Ps 126)
Last weekend, the Gospel at Mass (assuming you weren’t hearing the readings for Year A for the RCIA Scrutinies in your parish) was the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
Yesterday morning before work, I was enjoying a cup of coffee at the neighborhood coffee shop and knocking out a ton of email while overhearing the conversation of some other men about James’s words on faith and works. The conversation took its usual turns towards justification and then reconciliation.
I smiled and remembered the Gospel reading when one of the men started talking about how his children are of his blood – regardless how far they run, or what they do in life, it doesn’t change the fact that they are his children, and he sees being God’s child, born into the family of God through Baptism, as the same, eternal, blood relationship.
Imagine my surprise also, then, when the reading last night at evening prayer was James 2:14, 17, 18: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Indeed someone may say,’You have faith and I have works.’ Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.”
Now it’s dangerous territory to mix these two stories – the Prodigal Son and the Faith/Works discussion, but something about them came together in my mind the last few days, as they came together in the discussion the men were having at the coffee shop yesterday.
I’ve been considering whether to share the images I’m about to share, but they’ve been stuck in my mind as I have been thinking about the Prodigal Son and the conversation I heard yesterday. Our oldest son Thomas was mad at me on the morning of Valentine’s Day for disciplining him when he was retaliating against one of his brothers for something that they had been doing. As a result, he drew us this “Valentine” and gave it to us at breakfast…
First, I have to acknowledge some readers’ shock and horror at this. But I also have to remind you that the Halbrook house is a perfectly normal house of human beings with ups and downs, goods and bads, just like every other home and family. We have our moments, just like every family.
Thankfully, the storm of emotion passed quickly through our house that morning, and by afternoon all were reconciled, Thomas wasn’t packing for a foster home, and we were having a wonderful time as a family again.
But I remember the point that the other man made over coffee yesterday morning… regardless how far his children might run, they are still his children.
We still want the best for our children, we’ll still pray for them and their return to right relationships. We still want them “under our roof” (or at least in a place of safety).
We’ll still welcome them home and back into our loving arms.
Looking at this from the point of view of the son, though (and this is where the Prodigal and Faith & Works start to mingle in my mind), the father can’t welcome him home unless he returns home.
I left the coffee shop yesterday morning pondering whether God would trump our free will and pull us back into His saving grace even if we wanted to stay separated. God is the all-merciful Father of all. But would that be true mercy? Or would that be something else? There’s something in the fact that God’s grace, mixed with our free will and conscious choice to exercise that grace, impels right action.
The prodigal returns home. The good son shows his faith through works. All is right and well.
But mixed in that swirling set of readings and conversations the last few days, I’m still pondering… isn’t James onto something?
God moves first. God loves, and God shares his grace. The Father is merciful and waits at the edge of the homestead with open arms.
But don’t we have to act too? The grace inspires works. The son runs home before it’s too late.
“Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the wilderness I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.” – Isaiah 43:18-19
Future, not past.
Forward, not backward.
I saw a quote online the other day that noted, “Our eyes are in front because it’s more important to look forward than it is to look back. Don’t dwell on things in the past. Learn from them and keep moving forward.”
So often, I have to stop myself and think: Is it productive for me to be reflecting backward like this? Should I dwell on those mistakes I made in the past, or the slip-up that a teammate had last week? Should I hold a grudge over something someone did to me a few months or a few years ago?
Usually, if I’m honest with myself, letting go of the past while still taking forward anything I can from the experience it is the most productive approach.
It’s also often the healthiest approach. How much ‘baggage’ can I lug around through life with me, after all?
Yes, I’ve made mistakes – big ones. Yes, people have hurt me. Yes, I’ve hurt others.
In all cases, I’ve done what I can to make amends, seek forgiveness, right the wrongs, give forgiveness, or otherwise put the bad in the past.
I thought of this last Thursday when my second son Matthew James was about to head to the church with my wife and me for his first Penance. As his brothers got out of the van at his NaNa’s house so that she could watch them while we were at the church, he inquired, “Guys, have I done anything mean to you lately? Was I mean when we were getting ready for school? Did I say anything mean to you?”
Each of the boys, in their own way, kind of brushed it off, saying something like, “Yeah, maybe, but I forgive you and I’ve forgotten about it.”
Forgive – or seek forgiveness – and then move forward. Again, I find myself learning from my own sons. In their love for each other they forgive, forget, and move forward so gracefully.
Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it takes years, or decades.
There was a time, years ago, when I deeply hurt a mentor of mine – an adviser that I had in scouting when I was a youth leader. I didn’t intend to, and it didn’t happen directly. Another adult who was responsible for choosing & appointing the adviser role came to me and another youth leader, explaining that he was planning on appointing a new adviser the following year, and asking for our input on candidates that he should consider.
I considered the conversation one in confidence and told no-one – not even the adviser who was going to be “replaced” the following year. When everything had come to pass, he found out that the other youth leader and I had been involved in the discussions earlier on and projected a lot of his hurt onto us.
It hurt me too, because of what he had been to me as a mentor, adviser, and father-figure.
It took nearly a decade until our paths brought us back into alignment in our missions and work in life, and our relationship was touchy again at first, but time, discussion, and grace helped us heal those wounds – both for ourselves and for each other.
I’m still thankful that we had the chance to “make good” in our relationship before he passed on to the next life a couple of years ago.
To this day, he’s one of the men who had the biggest impact on my life, and I’m thankful we said “goodbye” as friends.
Forgive, forget, move forward.
“Remember not the things of the past…” move onward and upward to “something new”…
“Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 3:13b-14
