"Yet somehow, at some point, my devotion began to trickle away. I skipped Sunday Mass from time to time, until one day I realized I hadn’t set foot inside a church for months. Sin breeds sin, vice encourages vice, and that act of slipping away caused me to slip even further, until I got to the point that I no longer believed Christ was the Son of God."
There is a poem by Alexander Pope:
'Vice is a monster of so frightful mein,
as to be hated, needs but to be seen
but seen to oft, familiar with its face,
we first endure, then pity, then embrace'
This is a very heart-wrenching piece. Forgiveness is very challenging. A lot of people confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. "How can you forgive after so and so did xyz to you?" I like to think of anger or resentment as a fire, and we are standing on it. It burns us, it burns hot, when we are first betrayed. But to forgive is to decide not to add on to the flames. To let them take time to burn low, and eventually go out. If we refuse to forgive, we will continue to add fuel to the fire, and it will burn hotter, and burn us faster. In short: forgiveness is a unilateral and individual act. Reconciliation requires the work of the other party to "confess their sins, do penance, and amend their lives". This feels simple enough in a confessional but much harder to do when it is between people, especially people we love.
Salvation history is the story of a loving shepherd refusing to abandon a people who hate him. He teaches us, slowly, of what he is capable of; he teaches us, slowly, of how much he loves us, culminating in a final act of sacrifice that cannot be matched--he gave us a perfect sacrifice to pay an infinite debt. Even though *we murdered God*, God still loves us perfectly, and individually.
I have had to learn this lesson myself. I was not raised Catholic, I came into the Church in 2018. I emerged somehow from a family that feels fraught with similar betrayal. My parents nearly divorced due to acts of infidelity--it took forgiveness from the one and repentance from the other for the wound to heal. One of my siblings is estranged--this has, oddly, been the more difficult wound for me to let go of. But all healing begins with forgiveness. We can't heal until we stop burning ourselves.
Thank you for this essay--lots to chew on. God bless you! I will be praying for healing for both of you.
Thank you for this very beautiful comment! I love your comparison of anger and resentment as a fire. It's so true, and your description is perfect. It's so amazing when we think about the mercy of Christ and how He draws us in, again and again, ever closer, despite all our faults and failings.
Welcome to home to the Church, and thank you for your prayers. They're much appreciated!
They say that forgiveness is a process, and I think it's the same whether we're the ones forgiving or we're the ones being forgiven. The difference with Jesus is that He forgives us I think the moment we sincerely repent from our sins, though it takes some time before it fully sinks in.
"Yet somehow, at some point, my devotion began to trickle away. I skipped Sunday Mass from time to time, until one day I realized I hadn’t set foot inside a church for months. Sin breeds sin, vice encourages vice, and that act of slipping away caused me to slip even further, until I got to the point that I no longer believed Christ was the Son of God."
There is a poem by Alexander Pope:
'Vice is a monster of so frightful mein,
as to be hated, needs but to be seen
but seen to oft, familiar with its face,
we first endure, then pity, then embrace'
This is a very heart-wrenching piece. Forgiveness is very challenging. A lot of people confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. "How can you forgive after so and so did xyz to you?" I like to think of anger or resentment as a fire, and we are standing on it. It burns us, it burns hot, when we are first betrayed. But to forgive is to decide not to add on to the flames. To let them take time to burn low, and eventually go out. If we refuse to forgive, we will continue to add fuel to the fire, and it will burn hotter, and burn us faster. In short: forgiveness is a unilateral and individual act. Reconciliation requires the work of the other party to "confess their sins, do penance, and amend their lives". This feels simple enough in a confessional but much harder to do when it is between people, especially people we love.
Salvation history is the story of a loving shepherd refusing to abandon a people who hate him. He teaches us, slowly, of what he is capable of; he teaches us, slowly, of how much he loves us, culminating in a final act of sacrifice that cannot be matched--he gave us a perfect sacrifice to pay an infinite debt. Even though *we murdered God*, God still loves us perfectly, and individually.
I have had to learn this lesson myself. I was not raised Catholic, I came into the Church in 2018. I emerged somehow from a family that feels fraught with similar betrayal. My parents nearly divorced due to acts of infidelity--it took forgiveness from the one and repentance from the other for the wound to heal. One of my siblings is estranged--this has, oddly, been the more difficult wound for me to let go of. But all healing begins with forgiveness. We can't heal until we stop burning ourselves.
Thank you for this essay--lots to chew on. God bless you! I will be praying for healing for both of you.
Thank you for this very beautiful comment! I love your comparison of anger and resentment as a fire. It's so true, and your description is perfect. It's so amazing when we think about the mercy of Christ and how He draws us in, again and again, ever closer, despite all our faults and failings.
Welcome to home to the Church, and thank you for your prayers. They're much appreciated!
They say that forgiveness is a process, and I think it's the same whether we're the ones forgiving or we're the ones being forgiven. The difference with Jesus is that He forgives us I think the moment we sincerely repent from our sins, though it takes some time before it fully sinks in.
Yes! That's so true, and a great point to keep in our minds.