What Are We Hugging Tight?

If we pay close attention, we will probably notice that we tend to cling to what is familiar and comforting.

That is not always a bad thing. Unfortunately, we can do the same thing with our sins.

Sirach gives us a striking image:

“Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”

We can become surprisingly attached to our anger. We replay what someone did to us. We rehearse the conversation. We remind ourselves why we were right and they were wrong. We may even recognize that our resentment is doing us no good, but we are still reluctant to surrender it.

And this is not limited to anger. We can cling to pride, lust, greed, envy, gluttony, or any number of sins simply because they have become familiar to us.

But Sirach tells us that we have to let them go.

There is an important distinction here. Feeling anger when someone wrongs us is not itself a sin. Anger can move us to recognize injustice and do something about it.

But there is a difference between recognizing that something is wrong and cultivating a desire to make someone suffer. There is a difference between seeking justice and nursing hatred.

That distinction can become difficult to see when we are the ones who have been hurt.

We tell ourselves that we are simply standing up for ourselves. We should not let people disrespect us. We deserve what is owed to us.

Perhaps we really have been treated unjustly.

But another person’s wrongdoing does not make every response of ours right.

Sirach asks an uncomfortable question:

“Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the LORD?”

If we refuse mercy to another person like ourselves, how can we ask God to pardon our own sins?

We are called to love our neighbor, not to cherish our hatred of him.

Saint Paul reminds us why our lives cannot revolve entirely around our own demands. Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

We cannot simply indulge whatever passion happens to have our attention. If we belong to the Lord, then even the way we respond to being wronged must come under his authority.

Peter approaches Jesus with a question that makes this very concrete.

How many times must he forgive someone who sins against him?

Peter suggests seven times. That sounds generous enough. Many of us might struggle to get that far.

But Jesus answers seventy-seven times.

He is not giving Peter a larger number to keep track of.

He is telling him to stop counting.

God’s mercy, rather than the limits of our patience, must become our measure.

Jesus then tells a parable about a servant who owes his king an enormous debt, far beyond his ability to repay.

The servant begs for patience, but the king gives him something much greater.

He forgives the debt entirely.

Yet that same servant immediately finds a fellow servant who owes him much less. He grabs him and demands payment.

His fellow servant begs for patience using almost the same words the first servant had just used before the king.

But this time, there is no mercy.

He has just received extraordinary mercy, yet he refuses to extend ordinary mercy to someone else.

When the king learns what happened, he asks:

“Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?”

The servant who would not show mercy is judged according to the standard he himself chose.

And that is the uncomfortable point of the parable.

Every one of us stands before God as the servant with the enormous debt.

We ask God to forgive sins we cannot undo. We ask him for mercy again and again.

And God gives it generously.

How, then, can we receive that mercy while fiercely protecting our grievances against someone else?

The servant was happy to receive mercy.

He simply did not want to become merciful.

That is the danger for us as well.

God’s mercy is not something we purchase by forgiving others. The king’s generosity comes first.

But we cannot welcome his mercy while refusing the change of heart that his mercy demands of us.

This does not mean pretending that wrongdoing does not matter. It does not mean abandoning justice or allowing someone to continue harming us.

We can protect ourselves and others without wishing evil on the person responsible.

We are called to seek our neighbor’s good, even when doing so requires surrendering something we desperately want to hold onto: our resentment, our anger, our desire to get even, or simply the satisfaction of knowing that the other person is suffering for what he has done.

“The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.”

In Jesus Christ, those words become visible.

Jesus does not merely tell us how to love. He shows us. He is patient, merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion, not only toward his friends, but toward sinners, outcasts, enemies, and even those who crucify him.

If we belong to Christ, then his mercy must increasingly become our mercy.

And he does not leave us to accomplish this by willpower alone.

We need his grace, especially when the wounds are deep.

Forgiveness does not mean that the hurt immediately disappears. There is a real difference between struggling to forgive and refusing to try.

Sometimes forgiveness begins simply with the willingness to ask God to change our hearts.

So perhaps the question for us this week is:

What am I hugging tight that God is asking me to release?

Is there an old resentment I keep rehearsing?

Someone I refuse to forgive?

An anger I have allowed to become part of me?

Instead of rehearsing the grievance once more, perhaps we can turn it into a prayer:

“Lord, you know what happened. Help me desire this person’s good. Help me become willing to forgive.”

Sirach ends with a sobering reminder that our lives are brief.

We will not have forever to set aside the things we have been holding so tightly.

What grudge is worth carrying to the grave?

“Remember your last days, set enmity aside;

remember death and decay, and cease from sin!”