Where Charity and Love Prevail...

...There God is ever found. This is why we as Catholics must always be aware of what charity is and, almost more importantly, I think, what it is not. There can be no real charity if earth is the only realm that charity has relevance in, for if charity is anything, it is concern for another human's soul. Christ said "Love your enemies" He did not say befriend them. He said that you must forgive when others wrong you, but He did not say that you must forget. In fact, it would be quite idiotic and asinine to claim that forgetting has anything to do with forgiving.

There was a long time -years- that I struggled with forgiveness. I think that given my childhood and events stemming from that childhood, it's at least semi-understandable (which is not to say excusable). The association of forgiveness with mushy, warm fuzzies and happily ever afters kind of threw me off, I think. But forgiveness is not about warm fuzzies. That's not to say that warm fuzzies
shoud never result from forgiveness- I think that's as silly as saying that they always should- that's simply to say that God does not require us to feel anything. Of course, being humans, we will feel something. We can forgive and still feel angry or hurt or sad; we can also forgive and feel love or peace or happiness. Forgiveness is not about feelings. When we forgive, we will to forgive.

More often than not, I hope, we are called to forgive tiny things, things that probably should not bother us as much as we may let them. These things should not make us feel hatred or anger. These things should not cause friendships to end or families to be broken. There are some things that we are called to forgive, however, that necessarily end friendships and break families. If a man hits his children and wife, no matter how much he is forgiven, his family is still broken and there is still hurt.

In forgiving, we are not asked to put ourselves or anyone else in danger. As an example, I'll just use me. My grandmother thinks that in order for us to have actually forgiven her husband, we have to have a relationship with him. Now, when I was 13, IF that had happened, I would have been in serious danger of being raped by him (and as much as I may blow things out of proportion or over react, that statement is a true as if I had said "I am Catherine".) There are three things that I don't understand with this theory. First, even for someone who equates forgivness with warm fuzzies, how can one think that this would produce positive feelings rather than more anger and more fear? Second, how is putting the dignity of your person in danger loving yourself? Thirdly, how is allowing someone to persist in actions danerous to his soul loving your neighbor OR your enemy?

I've oftened wondered where this idea of forgiveness meaning letting people off of the hook came from. It's so different from anything divine; God is mericful, yes, but He is just in His mercy. Perhaps it came with the Protestant elimanation of Purgatory (a sad thing, by the way, I'm so glad we have it). It would make sense that as long as there is no punishment after death for those who made it to Heaven even though they sinned, then we should also not punish those who need it. If that is their idea of God's mercy, then it would follow that it should be ours, too. But is letting someone continue to act in ways that jeopardize his salvation actually being merciful or even just? Absolutely not. Two of the spiritual works of mercy show us that: instruct the ignorant and admonish the sinner. If the sinner recieves no admonishment, he recieves permission. As Christians, we are not called to simply let things go or forgive and forget, but to love one another; we are called to care for the souls of others. The idea of wram fuzzy forgiveness goes against the Gospels. Letting another person stomp all over you or get away with sin only endangers his soul. And that is in no way charitable. It's cowardly.

If we skew the meaning of charity in such way that it no longer refers to a supernatural type of love, how will we ever bring others to find Christ?