There are real saints who are living sacraments in the Church, and we tend to ignore them and focus only on the bad at great peril to our souls. But those who are deeply and intensely wounded by their fellow Christians need also to be heard and not shouted down. It is a pattern going all the way back to the apostles that the worst pain somebody attempting obedience to God faces is not from those outside the communion of Christ but from those within it who hate, abuse, betray, abandon, neglect, and backbite.
This is why Jesus commands the Church’s members to practice radical forgiveness of one another. I stink at all this, of course. It is a struggle every day for me. But Jesus says it is nonetheless the Way. It is hard, hard work to get there. But it can be done if we choose to receive the grace to do it. And the fruit it bears is freedom.
—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “Why It’s So Hard to Forgive“
by Mark P. Shea
