Sunday Gospel Comment

 

Alberic Jacovone OSB

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YEAR A

Zech 9,9-10; Rom 8,9.11-13; Mt 11,25-30

In-house hurts: For years, we Christians have lived with the conviction that we have all the answers. This would be nice, but it is not so. If this was the case, we would not live by faith, & faith never takes away the feeling that we are not in total control. Living by faith, requires that we let go of our arrogant self-assertiveness: for all our cunning we can never outsmart all our evil forces and no matter how versed we are in dealing with charges in & out of court, in the end crosses & contradictions are part of life and are meant to purify our intentions, lest we attempt to cover up the truth and disclaim responsibility (‘clean hands’). In life, no one is wholly free from guilt & sin -personal or communal. For this very reason, Jesus our Lord carried our sins & guilt and died on the cross for us. Out of this human inability, the words of today’s Gospel make their full impact: come to me all you who hurt, & I will give you rest: where can we go, Lord?

Modern Psychology has become very smart in analyzing our human ways & patterns. It says: sooner or later, we all get caught in the grip of hurt: when this happens we try to deal with it - to heal it & move forward in life. We may even -in a tough and stoic way- acknowledge that our human condition is such that we cannot escape our share of hurts: we are even reminded to attend to, indeed to honour our hurts. When we hurt, our friends in their good heart, advice us not to get upset, but to grin & bear. Life however is not that simple. Such an advice ends up shaming us even more. Since we are not able to snap out of it, we blame ourselves for not being strong, & end up in a vicious circle: we nurse - curse - rehearse our hurts, in a total inability to reverse the process and move forward. Indeed, no amount of irrational cursing God or luck, no angry rejection of the hurt, nor feeling sorry for ourselves, nor crying ‘poor me’ will fix the hurt. Psychologists tell us that we must reverse the process, but then, how do we reverse the hurt?

Come to me all you who hurt: Without the grace of God, no amount of rationalizing will turn our hurt around. Of course it is normal, natural and beneficial to assess, accept, acknowledge and honour our hurts; it is also wise to look for all options; but to make a pure act of the will - choose to let go - forgive those who hurt us - & move on in: all this requires discernment, guidance & strength which come from the Holy Spirit & the merits of Jesus on the cross, & are helped also by the prayer and example of Mary, Mother of God & our Mother, & by the intercession of all the saints. Yes, nothing happens without humble trust in God & prayer. In the readings of our past four Sundays, Matthew has made it abundantly clear that we cannot -on our own strength- avoid all evil & arrive at inner healing & integration. It is never easy to turn hurt around, fortunate are we if we can heal & grow. But for this, we need the ‘faith factor’, with its generating inner energy coming from our lived Christian experience: only faith and grace will restore our inner self-worth.

Mature faith & devotion, if properly lived, provide a much needed inner conviction, a marvellous integration & a deep sense of self-worth. And we express all this in our relationship with God (as father, Son & Holy Spirit) & with one another. In our hurts then, we naturally turn to the Lord & rest with Him, knowing that our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. Otherwise we remain like everybody: we remain dysfunctional until -with and like Jesus- we find the courage to say: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

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