Introduction
Today one cannot speak about mission in the Church without speaking about reconciliation. It is a theme we have heard much about in our Congregation in recent years, thanks to the books of Fr. Bob Schreiter and to the ministry and reflections of the team at the Center of Reconciliation in Chicago
Our call to holiness certainly speaks to us of the need for reconciliation. Our relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, and with creation is filled with fissures and breakpoints. To experience the forgiveness of God is at the heart of Christian holiness.
In our fractured and bleeding word the blood of Abel cries to heaven in a deafening roar. In the midst of it all, we hear the voice of the Resurrected Lord, who greets us with a wish: “I leave you my peace, my peace I give you!” It is the homage of Christ whose Risen Body still bears the signs of the wounds of the crucifixion, as a remembrance of the price he paid to win us peace and reconciliation.
Once again today with St. Gaspar we sit before the cross and contemplate the mystery of our redemption. I invite you to read the text of Isaiah the prophet:
“See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
Even as many were amazed at him-- so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals--
So shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless;
For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it.
Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before him, like a shoot from the parched earth;
There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him,
nor appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins,
Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way;
But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all.
Isaiah 52:13-53:6
Jesus carried our sins in his own body on the cross so that we could die to sin and live in holiness; by his wounds we have been healed.
1 Peter 2:24
Wounds
All of us know what wounds are. We can hurt people and we are hurt by others: insults, silence, a physical attack, the betrayal of a friend, etc. We are born into a sinful world and before you know it we are contaminated by the air we breathe and soon, all too soon, learn the ways of evil, of deceit, of sin. (The Story of the little girl at the farmhouse in Ñancuan: “Mommy said to tell you she isn’t home!”) We can grow accustomed to living in shadows and sometimes even feel more comfortable living in the darkness!
All of us bear wounds and scars of many kinds…some go back as far as our early family life. Wounds inflicted in family often accompany and haunt us for a lifetime. We might call these wounds received in our families as our “wounds of origin,” or “primary wounds.”These wounds have a profound influence on the way we act, on our attitudes, on our whole way of being.
Primary Wounds
Often, perhaps most of the time we are not even aware that we are wounding the very ones we love the most! I’d like to play through a few scenarios of possible ways in which we may have been wounded or wound in the family…so as to help us to identify our own wounds and to thus discover where we are in need of healing.
n The attitude of the mother and father before/during/at childbirth: excitement, acceptance, indifference, even rejection. “You were a mistake!”“You were never in our plans!”
n Where we fit in the lineup of brothers and sisters:
Oldest: responsibilities, demands
Youngest or only Child: the darling, the spoiled one, can’t do wrong
Middle: often overlooked, forgotten
n Comparisons: “Why aren’t you like your older sister, or your older brother?”
n The presence or absence of one or the other parent in the home. Image of father and image of mother. Separations, divorce (in USA today, 50% are from one parent families).Feelings of worthlessness and guilt.
n Climate in the house: One of peace, dialogue, communion or one of conflict, fights, arguments. Breed insecurity and fear.
n Exercise of Authority: “Shut up! I make the decisions, what do you know?”
n Alcoholism or chemical dependency in the homes: Adult Children of Alcoholics.
n Abuse: Verbal, Physical, or Sexual.
n Commentaries: Dad: “Priests never work!” (I have become a “workaholic”)
n Attitudes toward sex: was it talked about openly, naturally or hushed up, or limited to “adult conversation”, or “dirty jokes”. The impression of being something ugly, sinful and evil. Instead of seeing our sexuality as an expression of our yearning for oneness and for communion!
All this and in many more ways, we could have been wounded and we can still wound those we most love! All of us carry such wounds in one degree or another.
We need to recognize those wounds…and in all this reclaim them as ours! God loves us and holds us in the Palm of her hand!
My personal story
I used to ask myself: Why didn’t I have a normal home life? Why couldn’t I enjoy summer vacations with my mom and dad like everyone seemed to do? Why did my parents split up? These questions used to haunt me, always leaving a sort of bitter taste in my mouth. I was flooded with sad memories which tormented me.
One day in a retreat, our preacher invited us to re-read our lives and to discover it as Salvation History!(Tell my story…and how I discovered that God was always with me.)
By discovering God’s loving presence interwoven in the fabric of my sad home life, I could now embrace that story…my story…and discover it as my Story of Salvation: my Love Story between God and me. I still remember. The scars of those wounds are still there. But I now remember in a different way! I know that God does not send suffering and yet that suffering is deeply drenched in the presence of God and in the possibility of splendor!
I have put my story into the larger story of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection! In other words, the wound I bear is no longer a source of anguish for me. There is peace and in that connection with Jesus, a new strength, new discoveries. By His wounds, I am healed!
And so I can now pray: “Lord, for ALL that has been, THANKS; to all that will be, YES!”
Wounds in our Religious Family
As we go through life we also experience other kinds of wounds. Just as we may have been wounded in our family of origin, we are often wounded in our religious family…and we inflict wounds on others as well. We might reflect on this today. Have we been wounded in community? Have we been hurt by a snide remark? Has the trust and confidences between brothers in community been betrayed? Do we sometimes feel unappreciated? Do we feel rejected or belittled at times because of our positions on politics, theology, pastoral approaches, or sexual orientation? Pastors who don’t take into account their assistants, treating them as glorified altar boys. A new person coming in and undoing the pastoral work of years of the previous pastor, etc.
Recognizing/Identifying our Wounds
The reflections I am making here are not meant to drive us into depression, let alone invite us to lick our wounds, or to wallow in them. That does no one any good. Our wounds are an obstacle many times to our happiness and to our capacity to love ourselves and others, if they remain unconscious or denied. Unacknowledged wounds block the process of our growth, as we can get wrapped up in defense mechanisms, in order to resist the pain that facing those wounds might imply, or the shame those wounds might cause us. Nevertheless, we can learn to deal with this brokenness so as to break their often destructive hold over us.
Let us turn once again to the Gospel to shed light on our situation at hand. We turn to the Gospel of John 20:19-29:
“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
(Jesus) said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."
Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them,
"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."
Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."
Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God"!
Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."
This Appearance Story of the Gospel to recognize our wounds, but to see them in a different light. Jesus appeared to Thomas and showed him his wounds. They had not disappeared, they had not gone away…but they were transformed! And He invited Thomas to TOUCH those wounds, to place his hand in them…to recognize them and to believe!
Sometimes it is too late to mend relationships…death has often removed the players from the scenario. But it is never too late to mend our own hearts and to come to some inner reconciliation. (Humpty Dumpty).
What I am saying is this: old wounds, hurts, heartaches, memories, destructive behavior, do not have to break us apart forever! We can surrender them…we can let them go! They can be healed! We must pit the strength of Christ against the worst that can happen to us!
“By his wounds we are healed!” The wounds of Jesus remain but are transformed. And they become the center of light, of healing, and of comfort for Thomas… and for us! We are also invited to see and to touch and to enter into the wounds of Jesus, wounds which lead us to the very heart of God.
We need to know that we are connected with a God who experiences with us each grief and each wound. We need to be bonded with God who has had nails in his hands and a spear in his heart! His wounds link him back to his own death, but point ahead to life and hope as well.
With our hands within that open heart, the wounds we carry need not become infected wounds!! People are usually afraid to touch wounds, either for fear of hurting the wounded person or for fear of contagion. Jesus, however, invites others to touch his wounds. His wounds have become redemptive. They heal!Our small sufferings are connected to the great story of God’s suffering in Jesus Christ, between our little life and the great life of God with us. Jesus lifts our pain and connects it with the pain of all humanity, a pain he took upon himself and transformed.
Christ’s blood stands as an everlasting sign that our pain and suffering will never be in vain. Our life story is part of God’s ongoing redemptive work in the world. It is our life in the Paschal Mystery!
There is no Resurrection without Calvary . There wasn’t for Christ and there isn’t for those who follow in His footsteps! There is both pain and peace in the fellowship of pilgrims who have followed Christ to his Passion. I am sure that you can show your scars and battle wounds as well. The more one enters into the journey of compassion and solidarity, the more we enter into the vulnerability of Jesus, who opened His arms on the Cross, exposing his heart to the soldier’s lance.
As we grew up and as we have lived life in community and in mission it all hasn’t been easy! We have each had your share of pain, of misunderstanding, of frustration, of illness, of failure, and of betrayal. To live as Christ lived and to love as Christ loved, remains quite a challenge for all of us. To live a life of compassionate pilgrimage is to journey into the wounded lives of others, welcoming them into our life, taking upon our shoulders their crosses and suffering, entering into their passion so as to be a sign of God’s love for them.
Befriending our Wounds/Shadows
We better make friends with our wounds, or as some authors would call it, “our shadows.” Because our Lord tells us in Matthew’s Gospel that the weeds and the wheat will grow up together and won’t be completely weeded out/separated until harvest time! (cf.Matthew 13:24-30)
So we need to come to terms with our wounds and our shadow side, whether they be wounds inflicted for whatever reason, whether in family, in society, or even in religious community. Because if we don’t own up to our wounds and accept them deep down, we will end up projecting them onto someone else and they will influence negatively the way we relate to one another. If we love the wound, if we learn to embrace it and forgive it, then it will forgive us. If we hate it and attack it and live in complete denial, it will end up attacking us indirectly and come back and get us through the back door.
“A long, long time ago, there were two holy men traveling together through the countryside. They came upon a beautiful young woman sitting and sobbing by the side of a stream. Concerned, one of the monks asked her what was wrong. “I need to cross the river but I can’t swim and I am afraid of drowning,” she explained. Without hesitation, the monk picked up the woman, carrying her to the other side of the stream, where he gently put her down. She thanked him profusely.
“As the monks walked away, the second monk turned to the first, demanding, “How could you do such a thing? We have taken vows of poverty and chastity. It is forbidden even to talk to a woman, let alone touch one.”
“The first monk listened and succinctly replied, “When I came to the other side of the river, I put her down. Why are you still carrying her?”
That story raises this question for us today: What are you carrying around that you should have put down and left behind long ago? An incredible number of people go through their entire lives carrying feelings of regret, guilt, anger, disappointment, rage, and even hate. Unwittingly they practice an emotional masochism that continues to haunt and hurt them. By not letting go, they remain trapped inside prisons of their own construction. Today, resolve to be like the monk who put the beautiful woman down and moved on with his life. Don’t carry your emotional baggage any longer. Let it go!
The Scriptures remind us that while on our life’s journey, we are radically broken, even till the end! Sometimes our faults and shortcomings embitter us. We become frustrated that in spite of all our best efforts at improvement we fail again and again. And we can get many negative feelings about ourselves. In my younger years I was a very "explosive" character. I would let things simmer, get under my skin, all the while smiling, but woe to anyone near me the day the volcano exploded! As was the case with the eruption of Vesuvius, not many people would survive in the flow of my wrath! After these "eruptions of rage" during which the valley was left scattered with corpses, I would feel very bad and down. My own self-image would plummet. Finally one day I remembered the words of St. Gaspar, who many times would recommend to his Missionaries to "rest in the open heart of the Crucified" and to go contemplate "the great Book of the Cross" and to discover there the wisdom of God. I did that. For many minutes I would sit there with head bowed, ashamed, angry at myself and feeling rejected by God for my temper tantrum and accompanying lack of charity toward my brothers and sisters. And then I would contemplate in silence the Crucified one and recall the image of the suffering servant: "It was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, … he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed" (Isaiah 53, 4-5). As I meditated and rested in the opened side of the Crucified One, I left the Precious Blood which He shed heal my wounds. I found solace and peace and renewed strength to keep on struggling to improve. Over the years, I have returned many times to "the foot of the Cross"!My frustration pencil!
If we don’t embrace those wounds and place them into the wounds of the Redeemer, then we will be dominated by the great demons of fear, guilt, and anger. These negative forces dominate the lives of those who haven’t face their shadow! The shadow, however, is only dangerous to the degree that we are out of touch with it. We need to make friends with the shadow and bring it out of the darkness and into the light of the Resurrected Christ!
The Wound becomes our Gift! (=Sacred Wounds)
When I was Rector of our St. Gaspar’s School in Santiago de Chile, we elaborated an Educational Project which had the student in the center of our concern. It emphasized the need to reach out and to help those students who were having difficulties either in their studies or in disciplinary areas. This concern became in a sense the leit motif of my period as rector of the school. It began a real revolution and cost me much blood, sweat, and tears as we sought to put the downtrodden, the difficult student, the slow learner, and the person of the student in the center of our activity. One day a good friend and collaborator of mine, Ivan, asked me, “Pepe, why is this sucha passion in you?” I struggled to answer. I had never thought of it that way before. I gave some intellectual responses…but he insisted…but “Why? There has to be some deeper reason.” And after some soul searching and scrutinizing my memories, it suddenly became very clear! In a moment of my childhood, when I was struggling with the separation of my parents and the abandonment of my Mother, one of my school teachers, a religious Sister, stood by me…teaching me recipes to cook for Dad, checking in on me from time to time at home. She was more than a teacher to me…She was a friend! That made a deep and lasting impression on me and carved into my flesh a passion for those who are struggling with similar situations!
We share in the Passion and peace of Christ whenever we break bread together and share the cup. Christ shows us his hands and his side and in that simple act shows reminds us of mission in the world. It is to bring life to the world through the mystery of self-giving. Our mission in the world as followers of Christ, is to be so fully alive that others are enlivened by us.
It is important to experience God’s unconditional love for us. We need to take it in, to let His love free us. Once I have kissed my woundedness and have been healed by God’s love, I can then reach out to others to be agent’s of God’s love: in our woundedness, we discover MISSION.
Or in the terminology I have been using during these days: “In the cry of our blood (=our woundedness, our pain) we discover the call of the Blood, that is, our call to mission!
In this light we can better understand that phrase of St. Paul
Bishop ChristophMunzihirva, SJ of the Diocese of Bukaviuin, East Zaire was shot and killed by Rwandan soldiers in October of 2001, once said: “There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried.” This reminds me of a text from the Letter to the Hebrews 2:14-18: “It is precisely because one has been submitted to trial and because one has personally suffered, that he is capable of coming to the aid of those who are subjected to trial.”
If we ourselves have experienced in our own lives the compassion of Christ: his forgiveness of our sins, his patience with us in our weakness and cowardice; if he has become our fellow traveler, our co-worker, our friend and our brother, then we will want to act like Christ towards those who suffer and towards other sinners.
There are many people who are rejected, judged, condemned, who live in fear of being discovered, accused. They often hide behind masks because they are afraid to let their true selves be discovered, because they have believed the lies which make them doubt their worth and dignity and also God’s love for them.
The one who has embraced his/her woundedness and has accepted God’s gift of love, has been set free and is sent to be “wounded sojourners” to continue God’s work of redemption. We are called to become “compassionate pilgrims.” Compassion (=to suffer with) comes from deep within ourselves, from deep within own our woundedness, where we have encountered God’s love. The wounded one, who has been healed, now becomes “a wounded healer.” What we have received freely, we freely and joyfully share with others!
Robert D. Lupton, in Theirs Is the Kingdom, writes: “I have seen God take the broken, deformed things of this world, bless them with new life and sanctify them for his special purpose. From a broken tree, God provides shade in the summer. From a deeply scarred youth, he forms a person of unusual compassion and understanding, a model of hope to the disheartened of the inner city. From the twisted personality of a counselor, he shapes a healer of emotional pain and uses a rebellious nature for creative purposes.
“I am reassured to know that the straightness of my grain is not a precondition of usefulness to God. And I am humbled to see that out of the twistedness of my wounds, he designs for me a special place of service.” (p. 13)
We pray:
Lord Jesus, give us the grace to be true to our vocation of reconciliation. Only through you can we overcome our fears in dealing with the brokenness of our lives and that of others. Send your Spirit into our hearts, transforming them by your love, so that we may join you in being healers of a broken world. (Robert Morneau, Reconciliation, p.67)
