Note: this weekend Deacon Mike is preaching. This is a homily from the 10th anniversary of 9-11

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Today’s readings offer an uncomfortable, but clear challenge to us on this anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks: the challenge of forgiveness.  

• A woman @ Mass – she can’t forgive and no longer expects God’s forgiveness
• A marine @ Fallujah – And now he wondered how that boy’s mother or God could ever forgive him for shooting a child.
• Lloyd LeBlanc at his murdered son’s side – as he prayer the Lord’s Prayer  he realized the depth of the commitment. He would have to forgive the person who had done this heinous crime and taken his son’s life.  He wondered how he could not overcome bitterness and feelings of revenge that would surely wash over him day-by-day. LeBlanc said that each day, for the rest of his life, forgiveness would have to be prayed for and struggled for and won.
• And the families and survivors of 9-11 each have their own stories – and the struggle with forgiveness – and forgiveness’ attendants:  healing and wholeness.

Forgiveness is a challenge – even for we who live well away from the boundaries and intensity of these stories.  Like them we are called to be people who truly seek wholeness and completeness in this life through Christ – the one who commands that we forgive our brother from the depths of our heart.

And we are left to navigate the maze of the complexity that is forgiveness.  And it seems to me there are lots of instances when our forgiveness is all too human and partial….

1. No need to apologize – there is nothing to forgive …. But I wonder if I am really just in the state of denial at the moment and maybe this will all catch up with me later.
2. Forgiveness?  This isn’t about forgiveness, this is about justice… or maybe its vengeance/ revenge
3. You have not asked yet and maybe you never will – and you may not even think you have done something wrong, but I forgive you….  But I wonder how real that is
4. I forgive you – but inside I am still madder-than-a-wet-hen and I just forgave you because I am supposed to but I really do not feel like it.
5. I forgive you because it’s my Christian duty to forgive, but you don’t deserve it.
6. I forgive you – but in truth I really do not know what I am supposed to do with what I am feeling – I don’t want to feel this way.
7. I forgive you – and I mean it …. really, …but I won’t forget and I will hold you responsible for changing so that if you do this again, I will remind you of your former malfeasance. 
8. I forgive you – but that is it …. We can no longer be friends.  I can have nothing to do with you.
9. I am not ready to forgive you … maybe later.
10. I can’t forgive you – what you have done is so horrific that I can never trust you again – and I will never forget.

That’s just my list.  I am human and limited in my love and in my forgiveness. I seem to be re-learning how hard it is forgiving people who have sinned against me – to know what to do when my heart is filled with anger and a desire for revenge – even as I struggle to let God’s mercy and justice fill my soul. I don’t have any clear answers.  

Without mercy and forgiveness for others, how can I expect mercy or forgiveness from God?

This Sunday as Americans take time to remember the events of September 11and we are saddened – but are called as Christians to remember the events of 2000 years ago when God’s own Son, surveying a field of broken lives and desolate hearts, chose to call down from heaven not vengeance – but forgiveness.  

He by doing so opened a future marked 

• not by judgment but by mercy, 
• not by calculations of retribution but trust, 
• not by despair but hope, 
• not by fear but courage, 
• not by violence but healing, 
• not by scarcity but abundance, wholeness, 
• not by hate but love, 
• and not by death but by new life. Newness of life.  

That’s what forgiveness can do. 

May God lead us through this maze of broken lives and give all of us a palpable sense of the forgiveness in which – and by which – we live.  

May God grant us the faith and courage to walk into the future such forgiveness creates.  

Amen