Author: DV Dan

In 2015, Dylann Roof shot nine members inside an African American church in South Carolina and was publicly forgiven by the relatives of his victims. And in 2006, when a gunman shot ten Amish children in a school room in Pennsylvania and then killed himself, the Amish community there not only forgave him, they went to visit his family and expressed sympathies to them for their loss. What was the general response? Admiration for extraordinary selflessness and virtue? No, not that. More generally, these instances of forgiveness were judged as naïve fundamentalism and as unhelpful.  Why?

Timothy Keller, writing in Comment Magazine, suggests that there are a number of reasons for this, but he singles out two in particular. We are a “therapeutic culture” (where only our own truth and feelings matter) and a culture that has a “religion without grace” (its vision and virtue go no further than what echoes in our emotions and willpower).  Hence, our culture sees forgiveness more negatively than positively.  For it, forgiveness allows oppression to maintain its power and thus permits the cycle of violence and abuse to go on. Like a family refusing to stand up to an alcoholic member, it enables rather than stops the abuse and allows a sick situation to continue. Forgiveness then is a further injustice to the one who has been violated and can lead to a form of self-loathing, an acceptance of a humiliation destructive of one’s self-image, a further loss of dignity. Moreover, the moral pressure to forgive can be a further burden on the victim and an easy escape for the perpetrator. Is this logic correct?

From a purely emotional point of view, yes, it feels right; but it is wrong when scrutinized more deeply. First, it is evident that vindictiveness will only produce more vindictiveness. Vindictiveness will never soften a heart and help change it. Only forgiveness (analogous to dialysis) can take violence and hatred out of a relationship. As well, in the words of Martin Luther King, anyone devoid of the power of forgiveness is also devoid of the power of love. Why? Because each of us will get hurt by others and will hurt others in every one of our relationships. That is the price of community inside human inadequacy. Hence, relationships at every level, personal and social, can only sustain themselves long term if there is forgiveness. 

Moreover, with Jesus, forgiveness becomes singularly the most important of all virtues. It decides whether we go to heaven or not. As Jesus tells us when he gives us the Lord’s Prayer, if we cannot forgive others, God will not be able to forgive us. Why? Because the banquet table, eternal community of life, is only open to everyone who is willing to sit down with everyone. God cannot change this. Only we can open our hearts sufficiently to sit down with everyone.

That being said, it must also be said that forgiveness is not simple or easy. That is why in the Judeo-Christian spirituality of Sabbath, there is a (too-little-known) spirituality of forgiveness. As we know, the command to celebrate Sabbath asks us to honor this cycle in our lives: Work for six days – rest for one day. Work for 7 years – rest for one year.  Work of seven times seven (forty-nine) years – have a major rest (sabbatical). Work for a lifetime – and then be on sabbatical for eternity.

Well that is also the cycle for forgiveness.  In the spirituality of Sabbath: You may hold a minor grudge for six days – then you need let it go. You may hold a major grudge for seven years – then you need to let it go. You may hold a soul-searing grudge for forty-nine years – then you need to let it go. You may hold a grudge that ruined your life until your deathbed – then you need to let it go. That is the final Christian moral imperative. Desmond Tutu once said, “without forgiveness there is no future”. True – on both sides of eternity. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “The Fading of Forgiveness” August 2021]

By the time we reach maturity, we have also lost some vital, life-giving parts of ourselves. By the time we get to possess ourselves, all of us have been wounded, shamed in our enthusiasm, and parts of our bodies and our souls have died and turned cold. By the time we get to be more fully in possession of ourselves we are no longer whole.

And this bitterly limits how well we can love and especially how fully we can give life. In the gospels we are told, within a single story, how Jesus cured two women who, on the surface, seem to have very little in common. The story runs this way:

Jesus is approached by a man named Jairus, who asks him to come and cure his daughter who is thirteen years old. As Jesus is making his way to Jairus’ house, hemmed in by a curious crowd, a woman who, we are told, had been suffering from internal haemorrhaging for twelve years and had spent all her money on doctors without getting any better, approaches him surreptitiously, saying to herself: “If I but touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed!” She does just that and, the gospels tell us, instantly the flow of blood stopped. Touching Jesus did for her what doctors couldn’t do, it stopped her internal haemorrhaging.

Then, as Jesus is approaching Jairus’ house, he is told that the man’s daughter is already dead, but he enters the house anyway, goes to the young girl’s bed, takes her by the hand, and brings her back to life.

What these two women have in common is this: For different reasons, both are unable to get pregnant and give life; the young girl, because she dies at puberty, just as she has the radical possibility of getting pregnant, and the other woman, because the forces inside her that are meant to give life are damaged and haemorrhaging, making it impossible for her to hold a pregnancy. What Jesus does is give back to both women the possibility of giving life, in one case by stopping the flow of blood and in the other by starting it.

We all need a similar miracle: By the time we’re finally ready to give life some deep parts of us have already died and are too cold and lifeless to ever become pregnant. As well, like the woman whose internal bleeding makes it impossible for her to get pregnant, we too are wounded in ways that have us forever haemorrhaging out the life forces we need in order to give life. Parts of us have died and parts of us have been wounded and we are forever haemorrhaging in body, heart, and soul. It’s hard for us to give life.

Only by touching some higher power, and this is most easily done inside a community, can we actually change our lives. Therapy too is helpful to a point, but only to a point. In the end, the power to give life can only be restored to us through grace and community, through letting a power beyond give us something that we cannot give to ourselves. Then, and only then, will those parts of us that are dead or diseased begin again to give life. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Stopping the Haemorrhaging by Touching the Hem of the Garment” July 2006]

Every one of us is called to “present ourselves” to God, to dedicate ourselves completely to Jesus Christ, following him in love and seeking his will for our lives and our world. That is what this great feast we celebrate today is all about.

Today’s Gospel scene is familiar to us because it is the fourth joyful mystery of the rosary. The holy man in the Temple, Simeon, recognizes that Jesus is not just any ordinary child. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, he is able to understand that Jesus is the One whom all the world has been waiting for, the living God and the true face of our humanity.

The feast of the Presentation of the Lord is another “epiphany,” another revelation of who Jesus Christ really is. And in the light of his presence, once again he manifests the beautiful possibilities of our lives as children of God.

Our God is not someone distant who doesn’t want to be involved in the lives of his creatures. Our God is the God of encounter, a God who comes from the heavens to be close to us, who comes down to join his life to our life in love. This is the beautiful reality of the Incarnation, “God with us.”

Our second reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews, tells us that Jesus came to share in our “blood and flesh,” and that he “had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way,” except for sin.

What a beautiful gift our God gives to us! Jesus comes to share in our human reality, as a brother, as a friend. And because our human reality includes pain, suffering, and death, Jesus shares in those things as well.

Jesus, who is perfect God and perfect man, loves us so much that he suffered death to set us free from our selfishness and sins.

Jesus comes into your life and mine; he comes to purify our humanity, to return our human nature to its “essence.” He comes to make holiness possible for us, to make it possible for us to offer ourselves in sacrifice to the Lord.

Our lives are made for “presentation” to the Lord. Jesus is waiting for us to love him as he loves us. Jesus is calling to each one of us personally, waiting for each one of us to offer our life to him as a “present,” to make our lives a gift to him, just as he gives his life for us.

And this is a beautiful way to live.

In a practical way, it is important for all of us to continue finding the time in our busy lives to spend more time with Jesus: reading the Gospels, contemplating his life, making ourselves ready every day to receive him in Holy Communion and, as much as possible, to try to live in the presence of God all day long.

This is the real meaning of life, this is what makes our life as beautiful as it is supposed to be — God wants to be with us and each one of us wants to be with God. – Archbishop José H. Gomez

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the founder of Madonna House, once gave a wonderfully insightful interview. “Inside me,” she said, “there are three people. There’s someone I call the ‘Baroness’. The ‘Baroness’ is the one who’s spiritual, efficient, and given over to prayer and asceticism. She’s the religious person inside me. She’s the one who founded a religious community, who writes spiritual books, challenges others, and has dedicated her life to God and the poor. The ‘Baroness’ reads the gospels and is impatient with the things of this world. For her, life here and now must be sacrificed for the next world.

But, inside me too, there’s another person I call ‘Catherine’. ‘Catherine’ is, first of all and always, the woman who likes fine things, luxuries, comfort, pleasure. She enjoys idleness, long baths, fine clothes, putting on make-up, good food, and used to (while married) enjoy a healthy sex life. ‘Catherine’ enjoys this life and doesn’t like self-sacrifice. She’s not particularly religious and generally hates the ‘Baroness’. ‘Catherine’ and the ‘Baroness’ don’t get along.

However, there’s still another person inside of me, who’s neither ‘Catherine’ or the ‘Baroness’. Inside me too there’s a little girl lying on a hillside in Finland, watching the clouds and daydreaming. This little girl doesn’t particularly like either ‘Catherine’ or the ‘Baroness’.

… and, as I get older, I feel more like the ‘Baroness’, long more for ‘Catherine’, but think maybe the real person inside me is the little girl daydreaming on a hillside.”

Saints struggle and so does everyone else. It’s not a simple thing to be a human being and it’s even more complex if you’re striving to give yourself over beyond what comes naturally, morally and spiritually. Like Catherine de Hueck Doherty, all of us have multiple persons inside us.

Inside each of us there’s someone who has faith, who wants to live the Beatitudes, and who wants to be attuned to truths and realities of the gospels. Inside each of us, there’s a martyr who wants to die for others, a ‘Mother Teresa’ who wants to radically serve the poor, and a moral artist who wants to carry his or her solitude at a high level. But inside each of us there’s also someone who wants to taste life and all its pleasures here and now. Inside each of us there’s a hedonist, a sensualist, a libertine, a materialist, an agnostic, and an egoist. Beyond that, inside each of us there is also a little girl or little boy, innocent, daydreaming, watching the clouds on some hillside, not particularly enamoured of either the saint and the sinner inside us.

Our complexity is not our enemy but our friend. All those pathological opposites inside us are precisely what make up our keyboard. It’s precisely because we’re both sinner and saint, hedonist and martyr, adult and child, that we have the enough keys to play the various musical scores that life hands us. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Living with our own Complexities” November 2004]

Several years ago I attended a seminar on religious experience where a woman shared this story. She had been happily married, her children were grown and on their own, and she and her husband were running a successful business together. Then it all fell apart. Her husband, a recovering alcoholic, began to drink. Within two years, they had lost everything, including each other. Their business went bankrupt, they lost their house, and their marriage fell apart. She moved to a new city and took a new job, but the pain of what she had lost lingered and she found herself constantly depressed and joyless as she sought to sink new roots, meet new people, and begin over again in mid-life.

Having worked late, she was driving home and stopped for a red light. While waiting for the light to change she was hit from behind by a drunken driver. Her car was badly damaged and she, suffering from whiplash and a series of cuts and bruises, was taken to hospital by ambulance. After several hours of x-rays, examinations, and medical treatment, near midnight, she was released, to be driven home by a policeman.

As they drove up to her townhouse she noticed that the front door was wide open. Getting out of the car she realized that her home had been ransacked and vandalized. It was the last straw: All that penned up frustration, anger, loss, and grief finally burst, she lost control, began to scream hysterically, and ran across the lawn shouting curses at God and life in general – the policeman chasing her.

Her anger and her questions were about God: “Where is God in all of this? Why is God letting this happen? Why is God asleep?” Then, just as she heard her own curses as an answer, suddenly, in one instant, everything became calm. She ceased running, stopped shouting, because she felt inside of herself a flood of calm and a peace such as she had never experienced in her life before. No magic lights went on, no divine voices were heard, and she made no claims of “miracle” afterwards, but, for one second she realized that, no matter the storm, no matter the loss, and no matter death itself, God is still in charge of this universe. One second of realization was all it took. Calm returned. She sent the policeman home and began cleaning up her house. She has essentially remained in that calm since.

The Synoptic gospels record the story of Jesus calming the waters during a storm on the lake. As Mark has it: “It began to blow a gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on a cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, ‘Master do you not care? We are going down!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now! Be calm!’ And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. Then he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ They were filled with awe and said to one another: ‘Who can this be? Even the wind and sea obey him.’ ”

The parallel between these two stories is clear. In essence, both stories tell us that God is still in charge of this universe, every counter-indication notwithstanding. The first Christian creeds had only one line: Jesus is Lord! Ultimately that says enough, says it all. God still rules, even in death and darkness. But, as these stories also make clear, during the stormy moments of life, when our very souls are in fear of drowning, it will seem like God is asleep, comfortable, his head on cushion.

But, and this is the real challenge of these stories, calm is only a second of realization away. What calms the storm in life is not that all of our problems suddenly disappear but that, within them, we realize that, because God is still in charge, all will be well – whiplash, bruises, ransacked houses, alcoholic spouses, lost houses, lost jobs, loneliness, and the shadow of death itself notwithstanding. All will be well because, even asleep with his head on a cushion, God is still lord. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s The Storm on the Lake January 2000]

Academics, scholars, and university professors, like any segment of society, are a complex mix: In university circles you will find some of the most humble, gracious, faith-filled, and genuinely good people you will ever meet; just as you will also find some of the most arrogant, self-absorbed, amoral, and cynical people in the world. The academic world looks like the rest of the world.

Given that truth, I have long been haunted by a saying of Jesus that, often times, the deep secrets of life and of faith are hidden from the learned and the clever and revealed instead to children, to those of a less-complex mind.  I don’t doubt the truth of this; I wonder why.

Intelligence and learning are good things. God did not give us intelligence and then ask us not to use it. Naiveté is not a virtue and should never be confused with innocence. So why is being “intelligent and clever” something that can work against our understanding of the deeper secrets within life and faith?

Children are not self-sufficient even though they fiercely want to be. They need others and they know it. Consequently they more naturally reach out and take someone’s hand. They don’t have the luxury of self-sufficiency. When we are “learned and the clever” we can more easily forget that we need others and consequently don’t as naturally reach for another’s hand as does a child. It’s easier for us to isolate ourselves.

When we are less aware of our contingency we more easily lose sight of the things to which God and life are inviting us. The very strength that intelligence and learning bring into our lives can instill in us a false sense of self-sufficiency that can make us want to separate ourselves in unhealthy ways from others and understand ourselves as superior In some way. 

Superiority never enters a room alone, but always brings along a number of her children: arrogance, disdain, boredom, cynicism. All of these are occupational hazards for the “learned and the clever” and none of these helps unlock any of life’s deep secrets.

And so it’s never a bad thing to become learned and sophisticated; it’s only a bad thing is we remain there. The task is to become post-sophisticated, that is, to remain full of intelligence and learning even as we put on again to the mindset of a child. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Things Hidden from the Learned and the Clever” July 2011]

I would like comment on Jesus’ most important commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you!” We too easily read that simplistically, romantically, and in a one-sided, over-confident manner. But this command contains the most important challenge of the whole gospel and, like the deepest part of the gospel to which it is linked, the crucifixion, it is very, very difficult to imitate. Why?

It’s easy to consider ourselves as loving if we only look at one side of things, namely, how we relate to those people who are loving, warm, respectful, and gracious towards us. If we rate ourselves on how we feel about ourselves in our best moments among like-minded friends, we can easily conclude both that we are loving persons and that we are measuring up to Jesus’ command to love as he did.

But if we begin to look at the skeletons in our relational closets our naive confidence soon disappears: What about the people who hate us, whom we don’t like? What about the people whom we avoid and who avoid us? What about those people towards whom we feel resentment? What about all those people with whom we are at odds, towards whom we feel suspicion, coldness, anger? What about those people whom we haven’t been able to forgive?

Where Jesus stretches us beyond our natural instincts and beyond all self-delusion is in his command to love our enemies, to be warm to those who are cold to us, to be kind to those who are cruel to us, to do good to those who hate us, to forgive those who hurt us, to forgive those who won’t forgive us, and to ultimately love and forgive those who are trying to kill us.

That command, love and forgive your enemies, more than any creedal formula or other moral issue, is the litmus-test for Christian discipleship. We can ardently believe in and defend every item in the creed and fight passionately for justice in all its dimensions, but the real test of whether or not we are followers of Jesus is the capacity or non-capacity to forgive an enemy, to remain warm and loving towards someone who is not warm and loving to us. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Measuring Ourselves in Love” May 2007]

My sister Isabel went home to the angels thirty years ago. Isabel loved prairie lilies. About a dozen years ago, these [lilies] appeared in our planter box around the anniversary of her passing.

“There’s no reason for them to be there – we didn’t plant them or introduce new soil… the only explanation that makes sense is that Isabel put them there. They come back spectacularly every summer… every year we are grateful.”

The most important thing to take with us on our journey of life is love. Many readers will remember the story “Box full of kisses”. A man’s three-year-old daughter wrapped a box in shining gold and put it under the Christmas tree for him. When he opened it, he saw nothing in it. He berated her soundly for wasting good wrapping paper in frugal times.

Later he felt badly and tried to explain to her: “Don’t you know, when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside?” The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and cried; “Oh, Daddy, it’s not empty at all. I blew kisses into the box. They’re all for you, Daddy.”

The father was crushed and begged for forgiveness. A short time later his little girl died. He kept the gold box for many years, and whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In John’s Gospel (10, 16), Jesus says: I have other sheep too, that are not of this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd.

I’ve learned the truth of that statement through personal experience. Within my nearly forty years in ministry I have met, befriended, and become a faith-companion to men and women from every type of denomination and religion: Protestants, Episcopalians, Anglicans, Evangelicals,  Unitarians, small free Churches of all kinds,  Jehovah Witnesses, Hindus, Moslems, and Buddhists. In all of these denominations and religious communities, I have met men and women of deep faith and outstanding charity.

And this has caused me to ask myself the question that Jesus once asked those who approached him and told him that his mother and family were outside the circle he was talking to, asking for him: “Who is my mother? And who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever does the will of my Father which is in heaven, is my brother, and sister, and mother. (Matthew 12:46-50)

We tend to believe that “blood is thicker than water” and so we sometimes defend our own families, ethnic groups, countries, and churches, even when they do wrong things. What Jesus affirms is that “faith is thicker than blood” and, even more deeply, that faith is also thicker than denominational or religious affiliation.

St. Paul agrees: In his Epistle to the Galatians, he asks the question: Who is living inside the Holy Spirit? Who really has genuine faith? His answer: Those whose lives manifest charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and chastity. The presence of these virtues manifests faith and Christ. Conversely, he warns that we shouldn’t delude ourselves when our lives manifest, among other things, adultery, hatred, factionalism, strife, and envy. Our real brothers and sisters in faith are those whose lives manifest charity rather than selfishness, love rather than hatred, large hearts rather than selective sympathies, gentleness rather than hardness, and kindness rather than mean-spiritedness. Virtue trumps denominational identity.

I will always be a Roman Catholic, just as I will always be a member of my biological family, the Rolheisers, and my religious community, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. I’ve been baptized into these families and baptism, as the old catechisms rightly teach, leaves an indelible mark on our souls. These will always be my families; but they may not be my only loyalty. I have other families too, not of these sheepfolds: non-Roman Catholics, non-Rolheisers, non-Oblates. And I don’t love the Roman Catholic Church, my biological family, or the Oblates of Mary Immaculate any less because of this. Paradoxically, I love them more.

When Jesus asks the question: “Who is mother and brother and sister to me?” he answers that whoever does the will of God is his true mother, true brother, and true sister. But, as the Gospels writers have at that point already strongly emphasized, his biological mother, Mary, was the first person who fit that description. Hence, he is not denigrating his mother, but re-establishing her worth and importance at a higher place.

The same should be true for us in our relationship to the faith families into which we have been baptized, even as we open up our hearts more and more to embrace those others who are not of our fold. Faith is thicker than blood – and thicker even than religious affiliation. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Other Sheep Not Of Our Flock” January 2012]

Jesus warns us that we can commit a sin that is unforgivable which (in his words) is a blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. This is the context where Jesus gives us this warning. He had just cast out a demon and some of the people who had witnessed this believed, as a hard religious doctrine, that only someone who came from God could cast out a demon. But they hated Jesus, so seeing him cast out a demon was a very inconvenient truth, so inconvenient in fact that they chose to deny what they had just seen with their own eyes. And so, against everything they knew to be true, they affirmed instead that Jesus had cast out the demon by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. They knew better. They knew that they were denying the truth.

Jesus’ first response was to try to make them see their lie. He appeals to logic, arguing that if Beelzebub, the prince of demons, is casting out demons, then Satan’s house is divided against itself and will eventually fall. But they persist in their lie. It’s then, in that specific context, that Jesus utters his warning about the danger of committing a sin that cannot be forgiven because it blasphemes the Holy Spirit.

The people whom Jesus addressed had denied a reality that they had just seen with their own eyes because it was too difficult for them to accept its truth. So, they denied its truth, fully aware that they were lying.

Well, the first lie we tell is not so dangerous because we still know we are lying. The danger is that if we persist in that lie and continue to deny (and lie) we can reach a point where we believe the lie, see it as truth, and see truth as falsehood. Perversion is then seen as virtue, and the sin becomes unforgivable, not because forgiveness is withheld, but because we no longer believe we need forgiveness, nor in fact do we want it or remain open to receive it.

Whenever we lie or in any way deny the truth, we begin to warp our conscience and if we persist in this, eventually we will (and this is not too strong a phrase) pervert our soul so that for us falsehood looks like truth, darkness looks like light, and hell looks like heaven.

And how is that a “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit”?

In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul lays out two fundamental ways we can live our lives. We can live outside of God’s spirit. We do that whenever we are living in infidelity, idolatry, hatred, factionalism, and dishonesty. And lying is what takes us there. Conversely, we live inside God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, whenever we are living in charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, fidelity, gentleness, and chastity. And we live inside these whenever we are honest.

Thus, whenever we lie, whenever we deny reality, whenever we deny truth, we are (in effect and in reality) stepping outside of God’s spirit, blaspheming that spirit by disdaining it. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Lies and the Sin Against the Holy Spirit” January 2025]