"What's That Sh*t on Your Head?"

Rich writes:

A few years ago, I started my morning like most other mornings. Except that morning was Ash Wednesday, so I made sure to get to Mass before heading into work. After Mass, I pulled up to the nearby Starbucks and saw that the drive-thru line was insanely long, so I decided to quickly run inside instead. As I approached the counter to order my usual grande americano with an extra shot, I noticed a group of teenagers in the corner looking in my direction and laughing amongst themselves. When I realized there was nobody else behind me, I suddenly recalled the ashes on my forehead. I stood there waiting for my americano as the group got up, still laughing. As they passed me by, one of them said, "What's that shit on your head? A cross?" My mind raced in a million different directions as I tried to come up with the right thing to say. I simply stuttered, "Yes, yes it is," and that was it. That was the encounter.

I remember getting back into my car and feeling totally ashamed - not because of the ashes themselves but because of my knee-jerk reaction and embarrassment of the cross. This experience has never left me. In fact, it has forever changed my view of Ash Wednesday and the posture I now embrace when branded with the sign of our faith, the cross.

Do I really know what this sign means? 

More than a symbol or a custom, it signifies the start of an important journey. It says to the entire world around me that I am making a commitment - that I am undertaking Lent, a season of prayer and penitence. It shouts that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I am a Christian. I bear the sign of the cross.

It also describes my human condition. It says that I am broken in need of repair, a sinner in need of redemption. As painful as it is to face, it reminds me of the brutal reality that I am a hypocrite - we all are to more or less degrees. I know what the Lord expects of me and I am also aware that these expectations are hard. It's so much easier to pretend to be a disciple, reaping the benefits of appearance, rather than to sacrifice all the surface-level glory in order to actually be one. 

The reality of who I am, what I have become, what I have done and what I have failed to do is all so necessary to face. Without such a reckoning, I would remain in the dark place of denial, and in that dark place, I would languish in misery. But this reckoning is meant to bring me out of the darkness, not deeper into it.

Today, as I accept the mark of ashes on my forehead, I will distinguish myself publicly as a sinner. What I know privately about myself in the closed chambers of my heart, I now reveal to the world. 

During this cold time of year, when the ground is frozen and the trees still bare, I openly acknowledge the reality of my human condition. I acknowledge my mortality. I wear it on my forehead. It says that I am dust. It says that in these freezing temperatures, these last days of winter, I intend to make myself ready for that springtime moment of rebirth, the resurrection. It says that I intend to make myself right with God and with my neighbor, by renewing my commitment to the faith and renewing my commitment to the cross.

The cross is my calling card. It proclaims what I believe, and the one I choose to represent. The punk in Starbucks read the mark correctly. But what about tomorrow, Rich? When the ash is washed away, will people know? Will anyone be able to tell that you are marked with the cross and that you have been claimed for Christ? Will they sense it by how you live, what you do, the sacrifices you make, the quiet acts of penance you perform? Will the invisible tracing left at your baptism, and reinforced this day, be clear to those you meet? 

I strive not to make this a one-time, passing event. In the days to come, I hope to remember what happened today and how my Lenten journey began. And when I take one last look in the mirror tonight before washing my face, I will not be ashamed of the mark I bear. I will not be ashamed of the cross.

Chained No More

Rich writes:

"Forgiveness is a beautiful idea - until you have something to forgive." -C.S. Lewis

Throughout the last 9 of my 32 years of life, I had a particular trial placed in front of me. Never before has my Christian faith been so tested. A severe injustice was done. Hearts were obliterated. Lives were shattered. Broken, enraged, numb - these are some words that come to mind.

I don't want to get into what happened; this is not the place. What is important, however, is that I was brought to the very end of myself where I had nothing left; I hit rock-bottom. Struggling to pray, struggling to forgive, and struggling to love myself or anybody for that matter, I trained myself to live life on the surface. I never allowed myself to go there; in denial, I refused to even think about it. Ritualistically inflicting physical pain on myself in the gym each morning, pretending it was some kind of "disciplined virtue," I did all I could to self-medicate and just avoid the wound that was inflicted. And I let it fester - for years.

It doesn't take scholarly analysis to recognize that forgiveness is one of the most challenging aspects of the Christian life. It is undoubtedly a central element in Jesus' teaching. As with every other facet of the faith, he shows us the way - amidst the betrayal of a close friend, abandonment by the ones he loved, and an excruciating execution on the cross, Jesus forgives. 

I vividly remember reading those haunting words that made it all click for me one day. Making my way through the collected writings of Dorothy Day, her words jumped right off the page and like a handful of salt thrown right into my open sore, they caused me to realize the fracture of unforgiveness in my soul: 

"I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least."

Immediately my eyes welled up with tears, knowing there was a certain somebody out there who I didn't love at all. In fact at the time, on that breezy fall afternoon as I sat squeamishly on my brown leather sofa, it was safe to say that I absolutely hated the man. I called myself a Christian, with a tarnished crucifix dangling from my neck and a broken-in Bible in my hands, but suddenly I was at a complete loss. Dorothy's words left me speechless.

The Holy Spirit began to gently reveal how unforgiveness had been paralyzing me. Over the years, I had let righteous anger slowly harden into bitterness and resentment which eventually became a thirst for revenge. I still tremble as I type, knowing the former condition of my heart and the captivity in which I lived. Adding evil to evil is the devil's work. To bring good out of evil is God's work, and I was faced with a choice. In whose work did I want to take part?

Peter Kreeft declares that, "The best fruit, the most beautiful flower of suffering is forgiveness, the plant that blossoms only when watered with tears." And there is no alternative to forgiveness except hell, according to Jesus' parables. So in making this crucial choice whether or not to forgive, I sought to better understand the implications of unforgiveness.

Jesus is very clear in the prayer he gave us. We ask the Father to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. If we forgive others their trespasses, our heavenly Father will also forgive us. And if we don't forgive others their trespasses, neither will our Father forgive us. So that's it. You have to forgive if you want to be forgiven.

At the heart of forgiveness is the truth that the violator owes you a debt and you choose to release him. It is to say, "I know full well what you did to me, and I recognize the injustice or injury that you inflicted, but I now choose to free you from it; I release you." Forgiveness is not treating someone as if they never sinned. That would require us to let go of reason as well as righteous anger. And the church is very clear on this notion.

In his encyclical Dives in Misericordia, Pope St. John Paul II notes that, "the requirement of forgiveness does not cancel out the objective requirements of justice... In no passage of the gospel message does forgiveness, or mercy as its source, mean indulgence toward evil, toward scandals, toward injury or insult. In any case, reparation for evil and scandal, compensation for injury, and satisfaction for insult are conditions for forgiveness" (DM, 14).

Forgiveness doesn't preclude justice. Pope St. John Paul II forgave the gunman who attempted to assassinate him. But that gunman remained in prison. Justice and forgiveness don't counteract each other. Rather, they go hand-in-hand. This simple understanding has been so helpful for me personally. It's also been helpful to take a good hard look at my own heart. Jesus came to forgive me. How could I not do the same? Found on countless prayer cards throughout the world: he came to pay a debt he didn't owe, because we owed a debt we couldn't pay. My goodness, Jesus came:

"He came. He entered space and time and suffering. He came, like a lover. Love seeks above all intimacy, presence, togetherness. Not happiness. 'Better unhappy with her than happy without her' - that is the word of a lover. He came. That is the salient fact, the towering truth, that alone keeps us from putting a bullet through our heads. He came. Job is satisfied even though the God who came gave him absolutely no answers at all to his thousand tortured questions. He did the most important thing and he gave the most important gift: himself. It's a lover's gift. Out of our tears, our waiting, our darkness, our agonized aloneness, out of our weeping and wondering, out of our cry, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' he came, all the way, right into that cry" (Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, 133).

In the midst of excruciating pain and trauma, I turned to Jesus crucified. To run from the cross, to run from suffering, is to run from love. I try to look at a crucifix often. St. Bernard of Clairvaux said that whenever he did, Jesus' five wounds would appear to him as lips, speaking the words, "I love you."

In choosing to forgive the man who caused such unfathomable tragedy in my life and particularly that of my beautiful wife, I am released from bondage. I am released from the cycle of interior violence and hatred inside my own soul. I still hurt, I still remember the injury, believe me I will never forget; but in choosing to forgive, I myself am finally free.