Learning How to Forgive

The words "forgiving" and "forgetting" were the focus of an article in a Pastoral Bulletin recently, using the example of a woman who, after the marriage of her children and living alone, began to feel depressed. This caused enough of a problem for her to seek professional help.

She remembered the beatings she had received as a child at the hands of her stepfather. And with counseling, she was able to bring this period back to her memory and felt prepared to resolve it.

She asked herself if her remembering was a way for her to reflect on the beatings, to get angry. lose her peace of mind, and not to forgive. Or was it a way for her to open to the grace of God, find the strength to forgive and find peace? This was the decision she had to make, and not an easy decision. Though the person who caused the problem was dead, the point of the story was to stop being a victim and look forward to the future with a healthy, positive  attitude.

There are, of course, many who make matters worse by the way they handle such problems. They continue to deepen their pent up feelings of anger, which further damages their personality. Even when one forgets the past hurts, the pent up feelings that remain have to be dealt with. Otherwise, we will hurt others and continually have need for repentance.

To get rid of these feelings is to look deeply into ourselves and realize the damage they are doing to us. The goal is not to forget the event but the hurt that surrounds the event, and this is done by forgiving. Many find the forgetting difficult and the forgiving impossible. Forgiving is the crucial decision, an act of the will which is motivated by our decision to love.

A proverb from England says we are all in the same boat and suffering from seasickness. We are inflicting our emotional scars on others and receiving them back from them. There is no need to overlook the hurt we have felt but to look for the motives that caused the harm.  A person trying to live the Christian life fully, when faced with these difficulties would look at the cross, at the one who suffered much though having no guilt of his own. His response was to ask God to forgive those who were killing him, for they did not know what they were doing. 

Jesus understood their lack of knowledge, their limited sight, their damaged personalities. And understood also that the hurt they had received in the past was showing itself. He understood all these things. If we also try to understand the other, the pain we feel will be lightened in the some way. This can be done by looking at the cross, and bringing these things to mind. We will be doing this often during Lent.

Teachers of the Future Generation

"Leopard of Mt. Kilimanjaro" was a  song that a teacher remembers memorizing and singing when he was an 11-year old  elementary school student. At that age he didn't understand what the song meant to say, but hearing it so often on TV, the words have stayed with him for these past thirty years.

He left the teaching profession--troubled by the number of girls absent from class because of their decisions to have abortions--to begin a full time study of sexuality and other life issues.  He knew he was exchanging a field for which he had spent years in preparation for a field that offered no  guarantees in earning a living, but he felt that was his calling and made the change. The lyrics of the song were a great help in giving him the confidence to make the move.

Have you ever seen a hyena
walking at the foot of the mountains in search of food?
Those hyenas in the mountains
scavenging for rotten meat?
I long to be the leopard, not the hyena,
that climbed to the top of the mountain and froze to death.
That leopard of the snow-covered Kilimanjaro.

Overnight a great man, overnight a nobody,
for now I rest in the dark corners of earth.
The city is full of ambition,
and nowhere can I be found
in the middle of this city,
among its many bright lights,
completely abandoned.  But why should that matter? A man named van Gogh lived a more miserable life than I.

                                                                                       
In  our competitive society we are easily puffed up and just as quickly become anguished because of the situations we find ourselves in:  "overnight a great man, overnight a nobody." Leaving the security of a school job to try something new did  pose a problem for him, he admits, but remembering the words of the song was a great help. The song recalls the time that van Gogh went to a mining village with all the zeal of the Gospels to become a great painter.

Though the song's lyrics made an impression on him, he laments that the lyrics of today's songs have little in common with the songs he remembers as a child.

Prime-time TV, when many of the young will be watching, have musical performances in which the lyrics of many of the songs  have little positive value for the young, and these vocalists are the ones that become the idols of our young. Their parents know that the lyrics are not what they want their children to emulate but there is little they can do. Unfortunately, these vocalists are becoming the teachers and role models of our young. They are determining the thinking of the next generation.

Women Taking their Rightful Place in Society and Church

On March 8, 1908, in a textile factory in New York, a fire broke out killing all 129  women workers. They had complained to management about the working conditions of the factory and had been locked within the premises.  News of the incident spread quickly and became the rallying cry throughout the world for improving the working conditions of women everywhere. It was the start of International Women's Day, which sought to make known to the world the deplorable conditions under which most women were forced to work.  

A woman member of the Bishops Committee for Research on Pastoral Problems writes, in her article in the Peace Weekly, of the continuing problems women still face in society. She mentions Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish socialist and revolutionary who began the movement so the world would not forget the women who died in that textile factory and the problems women continue to face in the workplace. In Italy, men give yellow mimosa flowers to women, wanting to show solidarity with the working women throughout the world.

Korea also has problems with issues surrounding women. Women workers on average earn about 63 percent of what the men earn. And 70 percent of women workers are getting less for difficult work and holding temporary jobs. They face discrimination, sexual harassment, mistreatment on a regular basis, which sometimes is so outrageous that it makes the news. 

And still unresolved is the issue surrounding the treatment of Korean sex slaves for the Japanese troops many years ago. However, in other countries the news is getting around and will  put pressure on the Japanese government. These problems are not only of the past but today, in different parts of the world, we continue to see the suffering that women have to accept.

In Papua, New Guinea, a news story emerged of a woman, falsely accused of being a witch, being burned alive. The writer mentions that there is no effort made to bring those at fault to justice, and this is not, she says, a unique incident.

If care is not taken to right the wrongs being done to our working women wherever they exist, she believes the future of the  weak in society, the old and the young, will also be jeopardized.

Pope Francis has shown a willingness to get more women involved within the Church. In his Address to the Italian Women's Center, in January, he said "I too have considered the indispensable contribution of women in society. I have rejoiced in seeing many women sharing some pastoral responsibility with priests in accompanying people, families and groups, as in theological reflection, and I have expressed my hope that greater room can be made for a more capillary and incisive female presence in the Church."   She expresses her hope that the women of Korea will also be able to take their rightful place within the Church of Korea.

Continuation of the Liturgy of the Mass

Six months after ordination, a priest writing in the Bible & Life magazine recounts what happened to him at a morning weekday Mass. The pain in his stomach was so intense he could no long ignore the pain, and after the Gloria and the Oration he left the altar. On the intercom-phone he called the priest in the rectory, who came to finish the Mass for him.

The writer mentions that from his time in the seminary he has been troubled with health problems. He had a number of operations on his stomach but the problems continued. The intestines were so sensitive that when he ate something disagreeable he would have to run to the  toilet. He had gotten into the habit, he said, because of the stomach problems, of fasting for a number of days.  On one occasion he fasted for 40 days.

His cook would be concerned about his health and took extra pains to make sure he was getting what he needed and avoiding certain foods.  However, this did not prevent him from being diagnosed with malnutrition.

While in the  seminary he stayed away from liquor. Eating in restaurants was always a problem. And meeting people in the parish was always problematic since these meetings would often end up with eating and drinking, and the possible recurrence of his stomach problems. However, one day these thoughts came to him.

Jesus was called a glutton and a drunkard by his enemies. Didn't this mean that he was meeting people very easily, drinking and eating and spreading his message while at table? If we transpose this way of life to the present, wouldn't we say he was talking with laborers, the women of the streets, and various other members of society, eating  and drinking with them in the numerous sidewalk stalls of the city?

What was his situation?  he asked himself. When talking with those he would meet during a typical day, he would tire quickly and excuse himself. Drinking was always a problem for him and eating with people was like sitting on a  pin cushion. He wanted to be another Jesus but this seemed impossible. He began to think that he was not made to be a priest, and the thought bothered him.  Would it not be better to leave the priesthood, he wondered, if he could not live his life as Jesus had lived his?

One evening after the young people's Mass on Sunday, there was the usual talk of going out to get something to eat. As was the custom they would go to some inexpensive  place, and after a brief time being with them, he would return to the rectory.  But this particular evening, while with the young people and hearing them talk, as they enjoyed the light-hearted bantering on many issues, he suddenly and surprisingly recalled the incident at Emmaus, where Jesus was thought to be a a pilgrim and invited to the house of the two disciples to eat.  Wasn't his time together with the young people, he wondered, like the continuation of the Mass?

As he sat there at the table, looking at the boiling stew pot in the middle of the table and the young people putting in their chop sticks to pull out something to eat, he saw the empty glass of the person opposite him and filled it, and put his own chopsticks into the stew to eat.  Wouldn't this be what Jesus would have done?

From that time on, he became a changed person. He began to drink a little, and being with others at table no longer was difficult. The times that he had problems with his stomach were greatly reduced. Recalling that Jesus' first Mass was at an ordinary meal, he came to the realization that the time he was at table, sharing with others, he was also continuing what he had begun at Mass.

Growing Old Gracefully

A research  professor writing in the Catholic Times reflects on what  it means to grow old gracefully. Riding the subway recently she noticed that some of the elderly men were behaving in ways she found very strange, not like the elders of our society normally behave. It made the other passengers feel uncomfortable, she said. There appeared to be no  understanding  of how their actions were being received by the other passengers. They seemed to be men from another part of the world. 

As is widely known, our society is getting older and we have fewer young people to take care of the elderly. The numbers of those older than 65 years of age continue to grow and  the younger generation, who are expected to take care of the elders, continues to decrease. Complicating the problem even further, our society is developing technologically at an even faster pace, which makes it difficult for the older generation to keep up with the changes.

Under the name of restructuring, many of the young people are losing their jobs in industry.This situation  magnifies the feeling of the  older generation of being useless and a burden on society; often overcome by a sense of shame and helplessness. For some time now the older generation, with a smile on their faces, have been saying that whatever they have, much or little, they will keep their possessions until they die in order to get the treatment they deserve from their children.

Do we need to look upon these words and behavior of the elders as a display of strength, as something healthy? she asks. She wonders if it is not society that is bringing about these changes of skepticism and depression that frequently cause the elderly to take their own lives. As the elderly get older the rate of suicides among them increases. At the same age, the number of men committing suicide is two to three times that of women, an indication, she says, of the helplessness felt by many of the older men. She feels that our society and many of our families make those who feel dependent and unproductive lose their sense of worth and honor in society.

While our society is extolling the efforts of the nation in becoming more prosperous and developed like other first world countries, she wonders if it is at the expense of losing our traditional values and destroying family life. Without a safety net in place, those who will suffer the most are the sick, the young and old, she says.

It is often said that a noble attribute of the old is their wisdom. They have lived through the difficulties of life and have learned a great deal and have a lot to teach the young and middle-aged adults. But because one has aged does not mean they will automatically receive respect. With age it is natural to become physically weaker, but effort should be made to keep their mental faculties and the relationship with others as healthy as possible.  She hopes that the younger generation and the  middle aged adults will realize they have a great deal to  learn from the older generation.

Preparing for Lent.

This  coming Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. With the receiving of ashes,  we begin the forty days.  Each year, we hear the  same words from the Gospel of the day reminding us of the need to spend the Lenten period in  prayer, mortification, and alms giving. Often during this time we can be mostly interested in ourselves, forgetting we are called to be disciples in service to others.

The Catholic Times, in their editorial and desk column, reminds us that in today's world, where there is a great deal of talk of how we should be helping the less fortunate, there is little actually done to carry this out. Without serious reflection during Lent, this time will usually only center on finding ways that will help us become holier, as we concentrate on doing more acts of sacrifice and praying--all very important, but it should not stop there. We need to leave our comfort zone and  follow the example Pope Francis is giving us, not only by his words but more so by his actions.

The columnist reminds us that the Pope's actions are concrete acts of concern for the poor and the alienated in society. She mentions that in his Lenten message, he writes: "In imitation of our Master, we Christians are called to confront the poverty of our brothers and sisters, to touch it, to make it our own and to take practical steps to alleviate it." He goes on to say that we are called to be disciples as we go out to others, to be "God's leaven in the midst of humanity." We are, in other words, to imitate Jesus.

One lesson that is often learned from reading the Gospels is how uncomprehending were the male disciples. They had the greatest possible teacher for three years, traveled with him, saw his many miracles, and heard his teachings repeatedly, and yet when the going was tough they left him. 

When we take a close look at the disciples, what is  immediately noticed is that up until the very end it was the women disciples who stayed with him. From Luke 8:3, we learn the names of some of them: "Mary called the Magdalene, from whom seven devils had gone out; Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza; Susanna and many others who were assisting them out of their means."  They were the faithful ones.

Why was this the case?  The answers are varied,  but one thing  is certain: the women did not have any  ambitions to be prime ministers and members of the inner circle when the kingdom of David was restored, as the apostles did. Even the apostles' closeness to Jesus did not help them from being overly concerned about their own welfare. 

The women, however, were following Jesus not to receive but to give. The apostles were more interested in receiving, and this was their weak point. When they saw their dreams dissolve with the arrest, passion and death of Jesus all came to an end. Motivation is difficult to change  because it deals with our self-esteem.
 

This Lent we need to practice forgetting ourselves, becoming more interested in what we can do for others than in what Jesus can do for us.

"For Me There Are Two Heavens"

30 years ago here in Korea 103 Catholics were canonized. At the canonization a priest asked what seemed to be a strange question considering the nature of the event:  "What meaning does this ceremony have for those who have  been dead for many years? " A columnist in the Peace Weekly, who is a close friend of the priest, explores the meaning of the priest's words. At first the words were not understood but over the years he began to understand their meaning: the saints are not being canonized for their benefit but for ours.

This year, 124 of the earliest martyrs will be beatified and, hopefully, Pope Francis will be here for the ceremony; we will know, he says, by the end of March. What meaning does this ceremony have for us? They already have the glory of heaven, he points out. At the canonization or beatification we are only making public what has already taken place.

So what is the meaning to us? He gives us two answers. First, they are our Korean ancestors, persons we can be proud of. Second, we don't want to tarnish their image by the life we are living. We desire to follow their example, living in a way that will be worthy of those who came before us.  And what are the ways we can use to follow their example? Pope Francis has given a way in a recent talk at Mass.

The Pope said not to stand still, encouraging us to keep on walking the life of faith by living with with faith, hope and charity, living like lambs and not like wolves. The columnist understands the Pope's words to mean that we are not to divide our lives into two worlds, separating our daily life from our faith life. They are not separate and should be lived as one life. And lastly, to live our lives with joy, which will naturally occur, he believes, when we live happily.

And how do we live happily? He cites the example of Simon Hwang Il -kwang (1757-1802). He was a member of the lowest class in the Korean Joseon society of that  time. He was a butcher  and considered an outcast, but once he entered the community of faith he was treated like a brother, even by the noble class of society. There were no reservations in their treatment of him which brought a great deal of happiness into his life. He described how he felt:  "For me there are two heavens, the one here on earth and the one that will come after death."

The words of Simon should make us think about the society we are making. Is the breaking down of walls separating us from others an ideal we strive to attain? Or are we satisfied with the polarization of ideology, education and class? Is this just too much of an ideal to have any real merit in our daily lives? We as Christians can easily see the way Jesus related with others no matter their place  in the society of the times. There is always something we can learn from the other, and something we can give the other that will enable us and the other to  grow. But when this door is closed we are hindering the way our society can mature and be open to the  joy that God is offering us.