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Monday, March 4, 2013

Forgiveness is for the Victim


Forgiveness is for the Victim.  It is permission to let go of the emotional baggage that is weighing you down.  Monsignor Romano Guardini, in a reading from Magnificat, p. 79-80, explains what I’m beginning to see.  We react like animals, i.e., strike back.  That’s our first reaction.  But we are human beings and need to overcome that first primitive instinct.

Creatures are so ordered that the preservation of the one depends on the destruction of the other…He who injures me or takes something valuable from me is my enemy, and all my reactions of distrust, fear, and repulsion rise up against him…Here forgiveness would mean first that I relinquish the clear and apparently only sure defense of natural animosity; second, that I overcome fear and risk defenselessness, convinced that the enemy can do nothing against my intrinsic self…But the crux of the matter is forgiveness, a profound and weighty thing.  Its prerequisite is the courage that springs from a deep sense of intimate security, and which, as experience has proved, is usually justified, for the genuine pardoner actually is stronger than the fear-ridden hater.

Yes, ….what Monsignor Guardini says.

Galilean Fish Broil

BIBLICALLY BROILED FISH This Lenten recipe comes from “A Continual Feast.”  Note the beautiful story of Jesus appearing to the apostles on t...