sowing pardon

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen"

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This prayer of St. Francis of Assisi is such a beautiful prayer! It seems to me that, by praying it, it is a way for us to seek to love selflessly.

The line I have been focusing on this week is "where there is injury, pardon". I was thinking about Pope John Paul II who forgave Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who tried to assassinate him in 1981. After Ağca was sentenced to life in prison, the pope visited him and befriended him, asking people to pray for his "brother". He said he had forgiven him.

In his book Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace, Kent Nerburn tells the story of a father whose young daughter was dragged off into the woods and shot in the head by a young man who did not know her. After the boy was found guilty of murder, the father went to visit him in jail to get to know him. he said, "That boy and I are forever bound. We need to know each other. I do not know if I can forgive him. But perhaps if I know him I will not hate him. This is about healing and reconciliation." Mr. Newburn makes the point that what St. Frances meant by sowing pardon was to seek healing and reconciliation. And, "where the seed of pardon is planted, the flower of true forgiveness may someday bloom". How beautiful!

It has taken me six months to be able to report to you that I have forgiven the people who fired me. A priest friend has been urging me to seek a lawsuit against them. He thinks I should do it because of the injustice done to me but also so they won't do this to anyone else in the future. He said they must be made responsible for their unjust action against me. I imagine I would have a good case but I really don't think that is what God wants me to do. Being embroiled in a lawsuit would only cause angry, bitter feelings to linger and possibly grow larger and larger the longer it went on. I do not wish to spend my time and energy that way. Besides, our Lord asks us to forgive.

It is my hypothesis that the board thought what they were doing was good for the organization. A lawyer had stirred all kinds of emotions against me, making up things that were not true. For some reason, the board chose to believe the falsehoods leveled against me and they acted out of fear. I think they must have forgotten that I'd brought the matter before them several times when they accused me of never having done so. I'm still not sure why they accused me of going to great lengths to suppress what had been going on. The situation was evident to every person who worked at the center, which included several board members. We had all talked about it and had worked to solve the problem.

I have found an interior, gentle peace about what happened. I have acknowledged the injustice done to me but have moved on. Going forward in my life, I will continue to pray for them. My prayers have aided my healing. One day, I hope to reconcile with these people whom I once considered my friends.

No one is perfect. We all do things that are just plain wrong. We all sin. I know I've hurt people. After having worked through this event in my life, my prayer is that I always love, not hurt, those who are in my life. If someone hurts me, I will work toward healing and reconciliation. My job is to help others, as well as myself, get to heaven. I can only do that with a loving Christ-like, pure heart, not with a bitter, hard one. And, in this, I have discovered there is true freedom and joy to be found--a little bit of heaven here on earth!