Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Lovely God, send your Holy Spirit among us and knock on the door of our hearts. Enter there with your Holy Word and with the breath of your Spirit and rearrange the furniture of our interior life. so that we may be in perfect harmony with you. We pray through Christ our Lord. Good morning. Before his death, shortly before his death, a few years ago, I visited my ailing confrere, Father Thomas Brockhaus. At 89 years of age and having battled cancer and numerous other physical and psychological complaints, he was wheelchair bound and diaper wrapped.

[01:19]

On that occasion, he recounted that just a month previous, He had received the strong premonition of his impending death. I just knew it was true. God made it clear to me that I was dying. So I realized that I had some very serious business to take care of before my death. I set myself to forgive, to forgive all the people I had not been able to forgive in all my lifetime, and I asked pardon, too, for all the things I had done to ever offend the persons around me. I worked hard at this for several days, and the good Lord gave me enough time to forgive every single person and ask pardon for all my past mistakes.

[02:24]

After all that work, you know, I was joyful. I was filled with joy. Filled with love. I've never experienced that before. Completely filled with love. It was a miracle. The only trouble is, as you can see, I didn't die. I was so ready, so perfectly prepared for death, but doggone it, I didn't die. And then I became sad. I felt cheated. I realized all that energy, all that work, and here I'll have to do it all over again. And it's a lot of work, this business of forgiving and asking pardon.

[03:31]

It's a lot of work to have to do it all over again. The poet of Psalm 130, which is a Vesper Psalm, is in one of the Penitential Psalms, my confessor when I was a young monk would always say, now for your penance you go and say the De Profundis. I thought, what? What's that all about? No, no, just go and say the De Profundis, that's your penance. And I thought, what's the De Profundis? Well, the De Profundis is Out of the Depths, and it's this little psalm that we're going to take this afternoon, this morning. The psalm begins, Psalm 130 in our Office 129, Out of the Depths I cry to you, O Lord.

[04:36]

What happens there? The psalmist puts himself in a well, or in the cellar, and he throws up a lifeline to God who is on high. So, what we have here is the poet is drawing the vertical axis from the cellar, to the ceiling, to the roof. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Now, oftentimes, in our laments in the Psalms, in the complaining Psalms, we do have the poet puts himself in a lower level, but his voice The voice, the prayer of the poet, connects with God. Now, God is everywhere. God is not up and we are down, although I love your Coblen blessing. Look down upon, what is that? Come down. I'm going to somehow introduce some of that in my own community.

[05:41]

because the imagery is lovely, but God is, we can say it, God is up and we are down, and we want to be up, what God brings us up. Be attentive to my call for mercy. Verse three, oh Lord, if you were to keep an account of guilt, well, who could survive? Now, he's talking about himself, and that's an intimation of, well, I'm a sinner, OK? I confess that I'm a sinner. He's saying, I am a sinner. But what happens at the end of the psalm? We notice that this psalm is not a private prayer. It's not a devotional psalm. It's a liturgy. Why? Because the guilt that the poet feels for himself, I am a sinner, is really the sin of the whole community.

[06:43]

What does he say in verse 8? The ransom God provides is generous. Yes, he will ransom Israel from all her guilt. So when an individual confesses a sin or guilt, he's confessing, as part of the body of Christ, he's confessing that, well, the body of Christ is afflicted, the body of Christ is sick, I'm part of that sickness, and insofar as I can confess my sin and receive my guilt and receive pardon, the body of Christ is a healthier place to be. Part of it. But also, a confession of his sin in a liturgical context is giving voice to the body of Christ crying out for for mercy and healing. The body of Christ wants to be healed. Our society wants to be healed. Our community needs to be healed.

[07:46]

The world needs to be healed. And so, when the individual is praying a liturgy, he's praying for the benefit of the whole. of the whole world, of all of us, our whole community. He says, oh Lord, if you were to keep an account of guilt, well, if you were there as an accountant, registering all of our sins and all of our guilt, well, who could survive? But you are forgiving I call to the Lord. With fervor I call. I long for his reply. I wait for the Lord. This is a very lovely image. Again, I'm a sentinel. I'm a night watchman. And it's the last shift. It's 4 o'clock, it's 3 o'clock, it's 4 o'clock, it's 5 o'clock in the morning and I just can't wait to see over here

[08:51]

on the eastern sky, the beginning of light, because that means my watch is over. The beginning of light would be God's mercy. This morning was lovely. Through all the watches of the night, and then all of that looks like, it looks like he's talking about himself. in verses one to six, but in fact, he's giving voice to the prayer of the church. Oh, Israel. Israel? Israel is the church. Israel is the body of Christ. Israel is the community. Israel is all of us together. Oh, Israel, wait for the Lord. Wait for the Lord, as I have been watching all through the night. I'm just a part of Israel, waiting for the Lord, because the Lord's final exam time. Now, how do you say love in Hebrew?

[09:55]

You've got it! Chesed. Because the Lord's chesed, His unfailing love, His loyalty, His faithfulness, never fails. Our chesed fails. But when a human being's chesed fails, God just doubles the chesed. and pays the extra price. Because the Lord's hesed, fidelity, loyalty to the covenant. God cannot not be God. So God is hesed, God is love, God is unfailing love. Mercy. Because God's mercy never fails. The ransom he provides, ransom? How much did it cost? The blood of Christ on the cross. He paid the ransom with his own blood.

[10:59]

The innocent lamb on the cross paid the ransom with his own blood for all time and for all people. Yes, he will ransom Israel and we are all part of Israel from all her guilt. Just as dawn in the early morning, dawn brings light, God brings forgiveness. The resurrection of Christ, the proof of God's invincible love. What is our lifeline? Lifeline in darkness? It's hope. I have longed for, I have hoped for the Lord. I wait for the Lord through the watches of the night, through all the watches of the night, O Israel, wait.

[12:05]

That word wait is longing or hope, yachal in Hebrew. It's, again, the waiting is in our cloister, well in our, in the entrance to the church we have the eaves out there, and then under the eaves, the swallows, they come back every June Yes, every June. And it must be the same family, because they build these little adobe nests, these little houses, these mud nests under the eaves of our church. It's always the same family. There's three little nests there, and we take them down after three months of them having their family there. And I've often sat under those eaves and I've looked at those birds and when I come around the mother bird or the father bird with the swallows, no, swallows or sparrows, one of them builds the mud nest.

[13:21]

And both parents take care of the little ones. With some birds, it's only the mother or only the father that takes care of the young one. But with these, both the mother and the father, and so the mother and the father go out, and then when they're coming back, the little ones are only, and they have kind of this sense that the parent bird is coming, and so they They stretch out their neck as far as they can and they open their beak and their whole head becomes a beak. A neck and a beak. This neck, the little bird with the long neck waiting for the food that the parrot is bringing, that's an image of hope. in Hebrew. Hebrew is a very material language and so hope would be that little, the neck of that bird reaching up and waiting for the mother, the parent, to come and fill it with food.

[14:33]

Waiting. Waiting is also the word hope in Hebrew is also the word for the pregnant mother. Now does she have the baby? Well, yes, but not in her arms. We can see the bulge in her tummy. That's hope. She possesses what she's awaiting. She's awaiting the birth of the child, but she already has the child. But she's still awaiting to be able to hold that child. That would be hope. We have already what we're waiting for. We have forgiveness, and we're still waiting for forgiveness. This poem celebrates God's hesed, God's faithful love.

[15:36]

the consciousness of guilt has different effects on monks because we live closer the style of our life with the yes we have television and we have cybernetics and we have communication but we also have work in silence, and we have several hours of liturgy every day. And so monks tend to be a little more sensitive to guilt. The monk's heart softens somehow with the praying of the hours and the passing of years. Sometimes the monk's heart hardens as we are reminded every day at the praying of the invitatory psalm, our invitatory psalm, harden not your hearts as at Meribah.

[17:04]

Remember what we did back in Meribah? That's Psalm 94 that Saint Benedict proposes as the invitatory psalm every day. Remember what we did at Meribah? We had just received, we had just been freed from Israel. from Egypt, from slavery. We had just crossed the Red Sea and then we started complaining. Moses went up on the mountain and we started immediately having an orgy with a golden calf. Remember how it didn't take us long to get to idolatry from the recent fresh experience of having been freed. After a while, after some experience, it begins to dawn on us that nobody is perfect. Not I, not you, not anybody, not even our spiritual masters.

[18:10]

The poet says, if you were to keep an account of guilt, who could survive. We find that as well mapped out as our life may seem, many side roads intersect our highway to God, and these turn to reflection and add to our wisdom. With experience, monks acquire a kind of wisdom that stems from a deep understanding of themselves and humility, accepting ourselves with all of our mistakes and all of our failings and with that intense but sometimes frustrated desire to be better. And when all of our efforts don't get us anywhere, we become aware of our own cavernous desire and need for God's mercy.

[19:18]

With a little experience in the monastic search for God, we discover this and many other things, and we see that all of life is to be reckoned with, all of life is to be weighed with a more kindly eye, more gently, more lovingly, Once when I was experiencing one of my many fits of frustration and impatience with some person or with some policy in monastic life, and I was particularly bitter in my criticism, my very good friend, Bonaventure, who is also my master, reminded me, he said, Connie, if a monk is not kind and merciful, he's not a monk.

[20:20]

That's stuck with me for the last 40 years. If a monk is not kind and merciful, he's not a monk. Kindness and mercy is not just some gift that I have been given. It's something that, it's a choice that we make about how we are and who we are. The monastic search for God is never over. We're not here because we've found God. We are here because we are looking for God. The image of a monk, the definition of a monk is one who is looking for God. I don't come to the monastery because I have found peace in the place, in the monastery. I come to the monastery because I'm looking for peace. The search for God is never over.

[21:25]

We never arrive at the treasure trove at the end of the rainbow. The search is not a recipe to be followed carefully The search is not a roadmap on paper or a Google map that cuts through the mountains and lowers the hills and raises up the canyon floors. Early on in monastic life, we discover that the confrères are not all gentlemen, that the superiors are not always available. They're not always wise in their counsel. The community is not as hospitable as we once thought it was, and the Church herself is not a sinless virginal bride. But perhaps even more compelling is the awareness that having been cheated or failed against, we too have cheated and we too have failed.

[22:32]

We not only have much to forgive, we have much to be forgiven. If not by others, perhaps we have to forgive ourselves. It is often not so much what we have done, or what has been done to us, but what we have done with what was done. That is the greater grief and remorse. What did I do with what was given to me or done to me? Family feuds can last for generations even beyond the time when anybody even remembers what it was all about. How did this rift between these two brothers begin? Too often In the passion of the moment, drugged on the venom of righteousness and perfectionism, we demand our due.

[23:42]

And when it does not come, we stomp testily away, righteous in our anger, martyred in our souls. Better to be a victim than a loser. We've been wronged. Somebody has broken the unwritten rules by which we live. Someone has scratched the surface of our own perfection and left us exposed, abandoned, distant, unappreciated. Sometimes the other person knows what happened and why, but many times the person is oblivious to having hurt us. time passes, the more important the relationship, it could be a superior with a monk, it could be a family member with a monk, a contemporary monk with monk, the more bitter the sense of betrayal.

[24:51]

Instead of diminishing with time, the pain of memory grows stronger and hardens like a cyst that tries to justify itself. where it becomes a weeping wound, festering with time, a scar on the heart, acid in the belly, cancer in the community. We are all accompanying Brother Antonio in these days as he is awaiting two or three weeks, perhaps, analysis for a cancer test. But is that analysis more important than the analysis of cancer in our own community life and our own personal life? A theological cancer?

[25:54]

That's just eating away, growing within us and eating away because we haven't been able to resolve some issue in our past with ourselves or with somebody else. That is a cancer which is much more noxious than the phantom cancer that that we might face in our own physical lives. A little community that I spend a bit of time with every month in Mexico City, the first Benedictine community that was founded in Mexico. I'm their guide and confessor and I go for one weekend a month with them and And somebody said, Sister Sandra said the other day, oh well, you know, Sister Amelia, she has pre-cancer.

[27:00]

She went to the doctor and she has pre-cancer. I said, Sister, we all have pre-cancer, if we don't have cancer. But in our spiritual lives, there is a cancer which can, which can be killed. Only forgiveness can cure the cancer in our lives. An apology alone can't do it. This kind of pain, held to the breath, coddled, nursed by time and nurtured by the ages, can only be healed by the wounded, not the offender. because it is the wounded who is nourishing the cancer. It is the wounded who is nourishing the wound and treasures the wound.

[28:00]

The hardness is in my heart now. It is far beyond the hard-heartedness of the one who plunged the knife in. It is all mine. I own this pain, and I own this inability to forgive. I foster it. I nurse it. I'm suffering more than the other person that I might blame for the hurt. I can't help but remember my talks with Sylvia, Sylvia Vargas, no, Sylvia Nelson Vargas, the mother of 18-year-old Sylvia Nelson. who was kidnapped. The ransom was paid at $250,000, yes, and the girl was not released, only to be found the remains of her decayed body under a bridge in Mexico City, 15 months after her disappearance.

[29:10]

This was quite a national thing because, did you hear about it in the news? It was on the news all the time and Mother Sylvia often went on the television and simply asked for prayers. She came to the monastery often to just speak about what was going on with her life and her family life. The kidnapping of her daughter changed the whole geography of her family. I met Silvia after the kidnapping of her daughter by the same name, Silvia. The mother had dedicated herself to prayer and to alert many communities to pray for the rescue of her daughter and the many kidnapped people in Mexico at that time. She devoted herself to console her daughter's friends in encounters of mutual help and prayer, and this in the course of 15 months. of anguish and worry.

[30:12]

Sylvia received an anonymous telephone call from the prison, the Mexico City prison, from a person who informed her that the remains of her daughter would be found under a certain bridge in Mexico City. The mortal remains were discovered, identified, and the burial. It was at this time that I met Sylvia and listened to her. The victim's father had held on to the past like a treasure, or the past simply gripped his consciousness. He could not pardon, in any sense, the kidnappers for what they had done to his daughter. He could not pardon the state officials for what they had been unable to do in the face of organized crime. He could not pardon himself for not paying more than $250,000 for the release of his daughter. The father was a prisoner of the past.

[31:14]

and he would never forget what he could not help but feel deeply. On the contrary, Sylvia, the mother, had found another place, a place of peace and transcendence where she could go on living and loving. She had found freedom. She was able to speak and console the persons around her who had been affected by this and other inhuman crimes. She dedicates herself now to writing and giving conferences about the strength of forgiveness and a supernatural response, a theological response to the violence that ravages our society and our world. In a word, Sylvia found peace. That doesn't take away her hurt, but she found peace. She accepted the grace of pardon and the capacity to forgive the unforgivable.

[32:25]

She teaches that pardon is the ultimate and definitive overthrow of human logic and sentiment. Pardon is the ultimate triumph. not human logic and not payback time. Pardon is the ultimate theo-logic, logic of God, and that's Jesus on the cross. Her husband moved to Los Angeles, they got a divorce. They couldn't, this family, both parents had lost the daughter that they loved, precious daughter, joy of their life. But one, a parent, enclosed himself into a prison of fear and unforgiveness that allows him not to be free. We're talking about a multi-millionaire who can't be free. And yet the wife lives simply and dedicates herself to ministry of forgiveness.

[33:37]

She is free. They both lost their daughter. One enclosed himself in a prison cell of unforgiveness and the other is free. What about the unfinished business in our human relations? The question is, why does such an old sore hurt more now than when it happened? Or conversely, why am I more sensitive to the hurt with time? The answer is, because I have not let it go, and I let it ferment and simmer, Perhaps I see my own foolishness now. Perhaps I'm frustrated with myself and my inability to feel forgiveness. Forgiveness has nothing to do with feeling.

[34:39]

Well, it has something to do with feeling, but forgiveness is a theological choice that we make. We don't always feel good about it. I realize that the distance this has put between me and someone I trusted has been more damaging to my soul than the offense that was done to me at the beginning, because I haven't forgiven. I haven't forgiven myself. Let's talk about our faults and offenses, you and me. How have you offended me? How have I offended you? Recrimination doesn't get us anywhere. Blaming one another fuels the flames even as it tries to balance the scales.

[35:41]

You did this to me, I did this to you, so we're even. Recrimination, justification and laying all the cards on the table does not transform the need for justice into the balm of love. It does not give me back to myself a little more humble, perhaps, and a great deal more human as well. Only forgiveness can do that. Forgiveness is the therapy that wipes the slate clean that heals as it embraces. And I add, the unselfish generosity of forgiveness is a myth. Forgiveness is more important to the one who forgives than it is to the one who is forgiving. When I'm forgiving you, I'm forgiving myself and letting myself be free.

[36:49]

When you forgive me, You're letting yourself be free. Bitterness, once it sinks like silt in the soul, skews our balance and works havoc on our internal clocks. Bitterness is always there, scratching and digging and eating and burning the heart out of us. We smile at some, of course, but the smile is really pretense. We are really not open, not free, not really a loving and happy monk if we hold on to the past. Only grace in a personal conversion can begin to unpack the baggage of bitterness that stale anger and unforgiveness brings.

[37:52]

Do we even remember clearly anymore what was it that happened back then that drove a stake into the heart of one of our conference? Was it an intentional act, as we have thought all these years? Is there nothing that explains it, mitigates it, makes it understandable? Is there anybody we wouldn't love if we really knew their story? The other day I filled the car with gas on the way back from Mexico City to the monastery and our accounting system is such that for every single peso that we spend we have to have receipt and so I went, I paid the bill and then I went to this little office to get my receipt and so the window was open and I gave them the bill and I saw on her computer, I said, if you knew, if you had any idea the story of this person that is helping you, you would be nice to her.

[39:17]

If we had any idea of the story behind any one of our conference, we would be kinder to them. Hasn't too much time been wasted on this bit of nothingness already? Is this the kind of thing we choose to weigh us down as we live our lives as monks? Is this the frayed edges to which we have brought ourselves and we are unable to let it go? Forgiveness puts life back together or puts life back into life. Forgiveness is the proof of our growth. It's a sign of our inner healing. It's also a sign of God's grace. It's a sign of our letting God's grace work in our lives. It's the mark of our self-knowledge.

[40:19]

We forgive because we know who we are. The psalmist said it well. If you were to keep an account of guilt, Lord, who could survive? Forgiveness is our acceptance of the divine grace working in our lives. With the passing of time, we can admit that we have failed at times. We've never really done anything completely right. We've never been perfect. And that's okay. We are who we are. And so is everybody else. It is our forgiveness of others that wins us the right to forgive ourselves for being less than what we always wanted to be. Now, my dear confers, I'm going to take about 12 more minutes. I'm aware of the time and I'm aware that we're all very busy and we want to do something else.

[41:22]

My second last parable is called Three Hairpin Curves. Now, the road from Cuernavaca to Mexico is 30 miles, 29 miles, 30 miles. We live at 5,000 feet. And we have to go up to 9,000 feet and cross the ridge and go down into Mexico City, which is 7,500 feet. And so basically we have to go, in a very short space, we have to go up the mountain and then down into Mexico City. And so when I talk about a hairpin curve, I'm talking about you're going up the mountain and then you have to curve like this, curve like this, and you curve like this. Switchbacks, okay.

[42:27]

Thank you. Three switchbacks. On a steep road up a celebrated mountain to a park called Paradise Garden, the goal of many pilgrims, the road is narrow, rough, and heavily traveled with cars, pickups, buses, motorcycles, and trailers Where the road isn't paved, there is gravel, and the potholes and bumps cause accidents. You always find stretches of that road that are under construction. In the ascent, a person can never actually calculate the time of arrival. When I was little, I was impressed with the tight curves, the switchbacks on the road, the poor visibility ahead, And when I looked down the cliff on my side of the car, I could see at the bottom vehicles that had gone off the road and fallen tragically on the rocks below.

[43:31]

Metal, plastic, glass cadavers piled up, now immobile in their frustrated ascent. how many travelers had left home in the high hopes of arriving to their destiny, and due to an accident or a wrong turn, they never arrived. In this road, there are three extremely dangerous switchbacks. About five miles up the road, the hairpin is called Forgive God. In the tenth mile, the curve is called, forgive your neighbor. And another ten miles farther, a particularly treacherous switchback is known as, forgive yourself. These perilous curves are where tragic accidents happen on this road to paradise.

[44:36]

On milestone five, What is the switchback called? Forgive God. The curve is called forgive God. There we have to negotiate things that are difficult to face in the big picture. Terrorism, global warming, corruption, nuclear armament, drug trafficking, poverty on a massive scale, earthquakes, child abuse, random violence, and Haiti. These are scourges on a massive scale that don't require our forgiveness, but they cause us to wonder why so much useless destruction and anguish in a world created good by a good God. The answers to such questions are beyond our comprehension, but they have a lot to do with our relation with God.

[45:46]

Also, at this curve we turn into ourselves. This is the curve where the traveler asks God, Who I am? Why am I the way I am? Why is myself such a contradiction at times? Why can't I do the things that I want to do with my life? Why is my body the way it is? My feelings, so volatile. My intelligence, so scattered. My childhood, my adolescence, my family. Why is this who I am? Questions like these touch the question of God in my life. God who permitted or designed these odd details in my growth and development. This curve that requires a driver to pay close attention to the road ahead is called, forgive God.

[46:49]

At mile number 10 in the road, what is the switchback called? Forgive your neighbor. It's a lot like forgive God. And it, too, requires special driving skills. Approaching this curve, we need to slow down and ask, with Peter in the Gospel, how many times must I forgive my offender? Jesus answers, every time, totally, and from the whole heart. Seventy times seven? No, that's like saying, every time. Criminy, how can that be? It's as if Jesus were putting up a warning sign. Danger! Don't apply the brakes on your forgiveness or the results may turn out fatal. Some people think that to refrain from forgiving others who hurt us doesn't contradict Christian love.

[48:00]

Such a posture is heresy and it has no gospel basis. At times the memory of some hurt suffered goes back to childhood. It's not rare for children to suffer hurt and sometimes terrible hurt by their parents or other persons. Child abuse leaves deep scars that open time and again in the course of life. And here, too, the grace of pardon is necessary. Every single person that I know has suffered some unfairness or some failure in life, even in good Catholic families. I'm not referring to the carelessness, the weakness, and the stepping on toes that is our daily bread. I mean heartless aggression where people are victims.

[49:05]

Our response to a personal assault is to freeze the forgiveness, play the role of victim, particularly when we feel humiliated or threatened. But beware of the danger that is housed in the heart, where we treasure the unforgivable like a dog guards a bone. This is a serious error. To convince ourselves that holding on to resentment is not a sin. Yes, resentment is a sin, and it can even blossom into serious sin. If it's not attended to, resentment grows like a cancer, and the metastasis can invade our whole being. When we were young, we probably didn't experience the effects of our lack of forgiveness. We were more flexible, and pardon was part of the program of our growth.

[50:11]

But with more experience, that strong box of bitterness and resentment becomes more stubborn and it invades our life and limits our freedom. How we act, how we talk, how we think, how we treat our brother or our sister, if we allow it, this resentment knows no boundaries, we can lose control and careen off the narrow shoulder of the road and plunge to our death. How terrible this curve, forgive your neighbor for the faults that can never be justified. If we don't forgive, When we pray the Our Father several times a day, our lips should just catch on fire when we pronounce the words, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass.

[51:21]

Oops! Putting on the brakes of forgiveness makes us incapable of negotiating this switchback. If you feel helpless in this area of forgiveness, ask our lovely God for the desire and the gift to be able to forgive. Do you want to forgive? Do you want to want to forgive? Do I want to want to forgive? Remember always, forgiveness is not a matter of how you feel about something, about certain unpardonable faults done to us. Forgiveness is not a matter of feeling. It's a choice that we make, regardless of our feeling.

[52:25]

There's a third switchback on this road up the mountain. It's at mile number 20. What's it called? Forgive yourself. Perhaps we're more capable of forgiving God, more capable of forgiving our nasty neighbor, than we are able to forgive ourselves. There's a noxious weed in the human heart that sinks its roots in original sin. The subtle consciousness that we are infected with evil, that we are somehow unworthy of real love, that we are unable to free us from ourselves. This sensitive area requires careful understanding, compassion and patience. In a word, it requires a person to forgive him or herself.

[53:31]

When I hear the comment, oh, oh, so-and-so is very demanding with himself, but he's very patient with other people. The truth be told, I don't believe it. Mercy and compassion is all or nothing. If a person despises himself, it's very likely that he will despise others. Perhaps we have all heard the sigh of a companion or a confrere. I just don't think I can ever forgive myself for that. Well, dear confreres, such a statement is simply anti-Christian. We'd best apply the brakes as we approach this curve. Hold on firmly to the steering wheel. if we want to get to Paradise Garden. If not, the lack of acceptance of our faults and weaknesses can steer us off the highway into a terrible accident.

[54:42]

Oh, nobody denies that we are at times mean, uncertain, clumsy, forgetful, incoherent. We sin, but the grace of God has never abandoned us. Our faults are pardoned because we are, each one of us, infinitely loved. So why do we have such a hard time forgiving ourselves? Do we make ourselves more God than God, who is totally forgiving? Gentle confreres, the lack of forgiving God is not unheard of in human experience. Holding back on forgiving our neighbor is more common. But I'm of the opinion that the lack of forgiveness of oneself is the riskiest obstacle in our path to happiness.

[55:51]

Now, finally, after negotiating the three switchbacks on this road up the mountain, we come to the toll booth at the entrance to paradise. There's only one lane of traffic and so much, so many vehicles, just what we wanted to avoid. There's a terrible delay. Typical me, I become impatient because the car ahead of me just can't keep going. The motor keeps dying and the driver keeps having to rev it up again. Slowly this jalopy advances toward the toll booths. Too slowly. And so I apply my pressure techniques. I flick on and off the headlights. I honk the horn, just a little at first, but then with more nerve.

[56:56]

I tailgate. I use hand gestures. Then after a long while, I get to the toll booth. At last, the bill in my hand, I'll pay the fee and enter paradise. The jalopy ahead pulls out, I drive up, the guard greets me, doesn't take the bill from my hand while he says, that's all right, that's all right, go on ahead. And to my terrible surprise, he informs me, the driver in that car ahead paid the entrance fee for you. But who is that person? Who is the driver in that jalopy ahead? I asked, to which he responded, the one who's driving that old junk heap. You know something? He's the architect and the engineer of this road, and his name is Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth.

[58:02]

Let us prefer nothing to the love of Christ. May God bring us all together to everlasting life. This evening at 7.15 we finish our retreat with a short reflection on Psalm 127. 127.

[58:27]

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