Only forgiveness can overcome the pain
Easter 4, 11 May, 2003
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
I have been a priest for over 37 years, have served in city and country parishes, in overseas mission, including two years of war in Vietnam. Yet this last week has been quite the worst for me as a priest, and a Christian, perhaps for our whole Church, in all those years. The worst because of the great human tragedies which have been unfolding.
The tragedies of those who have suffered abuse as children or adults, male and female; those who have perpetrated the abuse; the public leaders in our country whose utterances have portrayed the usual depressing mixture of concern and opportunism; journalists and media people hungry for sensation; lawyers hoping for advantage; all focussing on one man who has become the embodiment of all the tragedies through his own personal tragedy, our Governor-General.
Some are now promoting a novel understanding of the position of the Governor-General in our society: to reflect the nation to itself. Archbishop Hollingworth's tragedy is that what he is reflecting to the nation is sexual abuse. Which is very hard, perhaps too hard for us.
Our Governor-General is an archbishop; at heart he is a Christian, Anglican priest, bound by faith and by his ordination vows, to follow in the way of our Lord Jesus Christ, above all the way of compassion and love, summed up in the word 'forgiveness'.
But he is also a frail, human being, and so has admitted himself that he has made errors of judgement – certainly in the eyes of secular society. And that is what is most serious and painful for Christian people in Australia: the divide between Christian morality and public, secular morality.
A divide which can be built around one word, 'forgiveness', which is of course built on love. Only love expressed as forgiveness can heal, overcome hate. This forgiving love is painful, it demands sacrifice.
In our Second Reading today, (1 John 3:1-2), St John writes, "my dear people, we are already the children of God..."; the children of God! Just before that he writes, "Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God's children; and that is what we are." The love that the Father has lavished on us!
The sheer greatness of this love is shown by the fact that God the Father sent his only Son into the world that we might have life. He did not appoint some sort of representative to do this, but sent his Son. And how did the Son bring life to us? He died!
In our Gospel Reading for today, (John 10:11-18), St John brings to us the much-loved words of Jesus, "I am the good shepherd". Now we must not allow ourselves to see those words simply in terms of a bucolic rural scene of a man and some sheep, perhaps with bells around their necks, blissfully munching away at the grass, with the bells tinkling gently as they move.
Jesus, as the good shepherd, is the door of the sheep; the sheepfold had no gate, the shepherd slept at the entrance, as a sort of human alarm. He was their carer, but also their protector. "the good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his sheep." Lays down his life!
Jesus the good shepherd did just that, he laid down his life for his sheep. And not just for those who were in the fold, but for those who were not in the fold. "And there are other sheep I have that are not not of this fold, and these I have to lead as well."
This was not an act of submission to the iron will of the Father, but an act of self-offering, "The Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again;"
Herein is a great mystery – when Jesus was at his most passive, that is laying down or giving up his life, he was in fact his most active, bringing eternal life. For St John, the moment of Jesus' being lifted up on the cross was not just the moment of his humiliation, but also his glorification.
This is the meaning of life for we who are Christian; this is the heart of being God's children – to be like Jesus, so that we may be like the Father. "My dear people, we are already the children of God but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him."
At the heart of our lives as Christians – if we are to be like Jesus, and so like the Father – must be sacrifice, that is the offering of ourselves to be made holy. We must be a holy people. John Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and the other leaders of the Catholic renewal of our Church in the nineteenth century, insisted on the Church as a "divine society", and the personal holiness of its people.
Our Governor-General is learning to die, to enter more deeply into the Christian meaning of sacrifice, the meaning of the Cross – and not at a moment of his choosing; rather at a moment brought about by human frailty, by original sin. Archbishop Peter is learning to fail, perhaps yet again?
And that is the great moment, the mystery, because in the worst moments of loss, emptiness, despair, we have only God. In God alone is healing, forgiving love. Of ourselves, in our frailty, we cannot love, forgive, completely.
In our First Reading today, (Acts 4:8-12), St Peter says to those who have just witnessed Jesus' healing power at work, "If you are questioning us today about an act of kindness to a cripple, and asking us how he was healed, then I am glad to tell you all, and would indeed be glad to tell the whole people of Israel, that it was by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the one you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name and by no other that this man is able to stand up perfectly healthy, here in your presence today."
The Governor-General is living out in a terribly public way the struggle to follow Jesus, to temper justice with compassion. But it is the struggle for all involved in this tragedy, and for all of us. The struggle, in the name of Jesus, to be people of forgiveness and healing.
There is talk of a Royal Commission into child abuse in our country. This will be legal, bound by the rules of evidence, have the power to compel witnesses forensic. We may do very much better to consider a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as the South African people did in order to cope with the damage wrought by apartheid.
Only forgiveness can overcome the pain, the resentment, the bitterness and the hate.
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