Daily Reflection Memorial of Saint Anthony, priest and doctor of the Church

Right up there with the majesty of safari wildlife as a highlight of my husband Jim's milestone birthday trip to South Africa last fall is the memory of our visit (yes, he took me along for good measure!) to the museum in Cape Town dedicated to the work and witness of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. 'The Arch,' as he was affectionately called by dear friends and colleagues, served as the public face and voice of Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid during those long decades of Mandela's imprisonment on Robben Island. But the most important legacy of the Arch came later when he spearheaded the Truth and Reconciliation Commission convened to examine atrocities committed and endured in the African quest for freedom. The courage to speak truth, the humility to seek forgiveness or the grace to grant it -- only after this hard work was tackled could the shoots of democracy begin to flower, the new Constitution notwithstanding. A bookmark I purchased from the Museum gift shop captures the challenge so well: "Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound to the chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive the person who harmed us, that person will hold the keys to our happiness, that person will be our jailor. When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberators."

Archbishop Tutu rooted his insights so clearly in the teaching we find in today's Gospel, part of the continuation of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew, the first of six with the pattern "You have heard it said ...., but I say to you...." Here Jesus calls out the slippery slope from judgement to anger to name calling ('Raqa' translates as 'imbecile' or 'blockhead') to rage to violence, even killing. Make amends, make things right, ask for forgiveness, find healing and wholeness. (Jesus' final "you have heard it said" comes at the end of the chapter, where love of enemy will become one of the most distinctive of Christian teachings.) 

A closing travel story... A couple came for dinner the other evening who had just returned from a milestone trip of their own -- to Holland at tulip time. They were disappointed that they had not made plans far enough in advance to visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Their story reminded me of another Amsterdam memoir I had read as a teenager that had a profound impact on me -- The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. Corrie's family sheltered Jews like Anne and her family in the hidden places of her father's watch shop during the Nazi occupation. After years of underground resistance, the familiar pattern emerged: betrayal, arrest, Gestapo interrogation, and final transport to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where Corrie's sister perished. Corrie herself was released only because of a clerical error. She would go on to dedicate her life to healing the wounds of war, working for reconciliation with her fellow Dutch citizens who had collaborated with the enemy. Her travels eventually took her to Germany, where a former Ravensbruck SS guard who had mocked and terrorized women at the shower door thrust out his hand to her, asking for her forgiveness. "Jesus," she prayed, "I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness." She goes on,

    "As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our own forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on God's.  And when Jesus tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself."

Where are we on the forgiveness scale today? -- needing to reconcile and seek, or, perhaps more difficult, needing to grant the forgiveness beseeched by another? South Africa to Amsterdam and beyond, how our world craves a peace free from anger and hatred and the violence that is their darkest expression. Could we be the beginning of the world tour?