The Light, The Dark, The Life

‘Hurt’ by DarkBeauty

All The World’s A Stage

15 March – The pastoral text / cellphone SMS of Fr Reuter is this: When the Roman soldiers were nailing Our Lord to the cross, he said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ When someone hurts you … forgive!

Forgive? Easier said than done. We cannot forgive. ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That is also for us who do not know how to forgive. To forgive but not to forget is not to forgive. We know not what we do!

When hurt by someone, we rankle inside, we linger on the pain, we inscribe the ache in our head, we describe it with unsaid words that weigh heavily on us. And yet we do not notice that we do any or all of that. When we are hurt, we suffer the ill-feeling and do not think for a minute that we can get rid of the agony if we but learn to forgive.

For us, it’s stupidity to forgive. We want justice! That is the only thing reasonable that must be done. We will settle for nothing less.

Of course. If not the law, common sense tells us that for any wrongdoing, there must be an undoing, or at least a retribution. A wrong act must not go unpunished, a damage done must not go unrepaired.

We are reasonable men, are we not? Reason must prevail!

That exactly is the problem. Reason. We use reason in dealing with our loved ones and our unloved ones. Faith. We ignore faith in dealing with people everyday. Faith belongs only in church, in prayer meetings, in times of Bible sharing. To love your enemy is blasphemy.

If we could apply much more faith and much less reason in our lives, we would be able to forgive even when not asked to forgive, and we would be more blessed. We know in our hearts that it is more blessed to forgive than to give, and yet we do not follow the dictates of our hearts. Instead, we allow the head to lead us not into the temptation of forgiving. The way we deal with people is that forgiving is not a grace but a sin, not goodwill but a wrongdoing, not a sacrament but a sacrilege.

In fact we count the number of hurts we get. And because we add each to the other, they increase in their intensity just as if we multiplied them. Each time we make a count, in fact the bruise becomes a self-inflicted wound. It hurts every time it’s touched. And so it never heals. We never ever want it to heal.

DarkBeauty’s shot I find perfect for illustration: Hurt is a stage of life, your life. I love it for being the perfect B&W photograph: Light defined by darkness, black defined by white, life defined by both.

Whether you see white or black or life depends on you, not on the other players. Whether you see yourself as focus or you see yourself as periphery depends on no one else but you. Whether you are frightened or you are encouraged depends on you alone.

But you see only the depth of pain. Ah, what you see is what you get!