The Lord be with you. As you know, our custom is not to have long introductions, but to allow the speaker more time. But we're very grateful to have Sister Camille with us again. Again, like Sister Marie-Julie Anne, she's someone who has been a friend of the community for a number of years. So we're very glad that you are here and especially glad that she is here. I've been warned that at times the speaker's voice doesn't carry sufficiently. If that's the case, I don't want you to sit there and suffer. Simply raise your hands and I will raise my voice. Is that fair enough? Okay, then I'll count on you to let me know. I'd like to begin my presentation by thanking Father Martin and the Benedictine community for inviting me to deliver one of the Jubilee presentations.

[01:08]

Mount Savior's Jubilee coincides with my 50th anniversary as a Sister of Mercy. This monastery, for more than half my religious life, has nurtured my soul, and I always experience a sense of homecoming in this homeland of my heart. My other home, the convent in which I live with three other sisters in Glendale, Queens, has a flat roof from which I can see the Manhattan skyline. It's hard to look at the void where the Twin Towers stood until September 11th. My two nephews, both New York City policemen, have spent the week since then sifting through the rubble left by the terrorists. Some of the rubble was human remains. All over are the ashes of incinerated innocent men, women, and children. Michael and Ronnie, my nephews, had a separate agenda.

[02:13]

They were searching for their lost cousin, an electrician employed at the site, a good and decent man who left a wife, a toddler, and an infant. It's impossible to ignore the consequences of that attack in a presentation about forgiveness and reconciliation. That event has been part of talks on numerous subjects. The highly respected public broadcaster Bill Moyers justified its inclusion in a keynote address before an Environmental Grantmakers Association on October 16th. Moyers acknowledged that the events of September 11th have changed us all. He says that they will unite Americans in the same way Pearl Harbor did his parents' generation. For people of his generation and mine, it was the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the dogs and the fire hoses in Alabama.

[03:18]

He explains, for this generation, that defining moment will be September 11th, 2001. The worst act of terrorism in our nation's history. It has changed the country. It has changed us. Moyers continues, that's what the terrorists intend. Terrorists don't want to own our land, wealth, monuments, buildings, fields, or streams. They're not after tangible property. Sure, they aim to annihilate the targets they strike. But their real goal is to get inside our heads, our psyche, and to deprive us, the survivors, of peace of mind, of trust, of faith. They aim to prevent us from believing again in a world of mercy, justice, and love, or working to bring that better world to pass.

[04:21]

This is their real target, he continues, to turn our imaginations into Afghanistan's, where they can rule by fear. Once they possess us, they're hard to exercise. Like many thoughtful people, I long for justice for the perpetrators of the attack, but not for a war inflicted on innocent civilians And I pray for ways to resist unleashing the kind of violence that could transform us into the enemy we despise. This desire to find an alternative way in an unforgiving world is what draws us to communities of faith where we can find direction and support for the lessons learned from Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. As we come with this common wound inflicted on September 11th, we come also with our personal hurts.

[05:29]

We look for ways to prevent them from becoming cancers in our souls. And so it's with a mix of trepidation and inner peace that I dare to address today's topic, the challenge of living the gospel in today's unforgiving world. Now, I've been around long enough to have experienced personally and vicariously a wide range of miseries. I've marveled at the capacity of some people to overcome evil with goodness. Conversely, I've seen the intensification of suffering that occurs in those who cannot let go of the griefs and injustices that have bruised and battered them. My desire today is to examine those circumstances and actions that wound us to consider the possibilities and limits of forgiveness, the nature and consequences of reconciliation, and the struggle to be faithful in an environment that considers this enterprise naive or foolish.

[06:52]

I'll share what I've learned from others, from the deep reservoir of faith, and from life. And I'll draw on stories, all true, that have formed my thinking. I invite you to accept what is useful for your own good, to cast aside that which seems useless, and to forgive my limitations. I begin with the blessed words God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, words that are breathtakingly beautiful, emotionally stirring, and intellectually compelling. God asks, is this not the sort of fast that pleases me? It is the Lord Yahweh who speaks. to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to share your bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the one you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin.

[07:59]

Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound, your wound, will be quickly healed over. Isaiah's values are the values Jesus embodied. They're the goals of his followers. They're beautiful to consider and difficult to apply in a world so often wounded and wounding. Yet God promises that when we immerse ourselves in those concerns of others, our own wounds will be healed. However, we often need to work on ourselves before we can enter and touch the sufferings of others. As pilgrims and searchers, we struggle to find authentic places where we can bring our deepest hurts and find the spiritual and psychic energy to shed the chains that bind us, to shake the oppression that keeps us from freedom of mind and heart.

[09:07]

It's amazing how many of us are impelled to share those sacred places we carve out for ourselves with those whom we care about. Centuries ago, Seneca, pondering the grandeur of the earth, the splendor of a sunset, described the urgency he felt to share those discoveries with others. He said, Even the best and most useful gives me no pleasure if I alone may know it. For all that is best and beautiful offered to me on the condition that I keep it hoarded up within my soul and share it with no one, I would refuse it. We cannot enjoy a treasure without a companion to our joy. For many of us, Mount Saviour Monastery has been a treasure we've been impelled to share with others.

[10:11]

My guess is that most, if not all of us here, have told others about this holy mount and have invited them to see for themselves what we cherish and to find for themselves what they need. Twenty years ago, the Mount Savior Chronicle, marking the 1500th anniversary of the birth of Saint Benedict and the 30th anniversary of this monastery, carried an expression of appreciation for the hospitality discovered here. It said, in part, we who come here walk through many worlds. We're college professors and laborers, educated and unlettered, rich and poor, broken and healers, and as the late Henri Nouwen put it, wounded healers. We're celibate and wondering if we've really served the Lord in our barrenness. We're married and anxious that we've not sufficiently prepared the children we've brought into the world.

[11:19]

We're young and restless, old and discouraged. We're young and discouraged, old and restless. We come for the most part as strangers, bonded only by those qualities that draw us like magnets to this monastery. This monastery, your community of Benedictines, acts as a kind of centrifugal force that pulls us to seek God. We come in search of a credible evidence of faith from which we can draw strength and encouragement. What we find in you is openness and easy hospitality. We find more. We find constancy, a handful of men who in good times and bad, praise God, in the presence of outsiders, in the privacy of community. You may think of yourselves as weak, imperfect, tired, discouraged, anxious, at odds with one another, less than exquisitely successful.

[12:30]

You may be all that, but you are real. The regularity of your lives, the predictability of your prayer is a sign of God's fidelity to all creation, to each of us who come to you because we thirst for living waters. You speak to us of Jesus Christ and image him in the fidelity of your lives. You help contemporize the gospel. You compensate for much of what is weak and shallow in the church. You support many who are good and who want to be better, many who are weak and long to be strong. The words I've just read were mine. Wisdom teaches that joy is an infallible sign of the presence of God. So many times, good humor has burst forth in the midst of monastic trials. Some years ago, I recall that word was out that the crypt was flooded.

[13:37]

Fixing the problem would be costly. My local convent sent a small donation. The response came on a postcard from Father Martin. His physician's scroll deciphered, read, Thank you for your contribution. This entitles you to one canoe ride in our crypt. Old photographs going back to 1975 remind me of the women and men I've transported. On a wall in our convent is one of Brother Luke's original paintings. It's a gift from a man I brought here more than 20 years ago because I didn't have sufficient strength to help him myself. I'll call him John Ellison. John was a brilliant, thoroughly eccentric teacher in my department at Brooklyn College.

[14:41]

He lived in Greenwich Village with a talented photographer about half his age. John was estranged from the church. Brad had no religious connections. One terrible night, Brad committed suicide. John went berserk. I helped him as much as I could, identifying the body at the morgue, preparing a funeral service held at the crematorium on a dark December day. John's behavior deteriorated. He frightened his students and was in jeopardy of losing his position. I didn't know what drove him. I think guilt, a sense of abandonment, fury at God. Maybe they were part of the mix. He agreed to let me bring him here for a weekend during winter break. I thought he might find solace in the service and the solitude.

[15:43]

In fact, he came to very few services. He spent a lot of time with the cows the monastery then had, and a great deal of time with the guest master, the late brother Ansgar. One or the other, or both, helped restore his sanity. He got on with his life, never fully healed, but relieved of the consuming anger that would have destroyed him. Brother Luke's painting holds that memory and my gratitude. Were all our individual stories compiled, they would rise like incense from the sacrificial lives of the monks who make a place for us here. There are, of course, many people we'd like to bring here but can't. It's possible. It's possible that we may become the places accessible to them, that we may be the ambassadors of peace and mercy, healing others' wounds.

[16:56]

And yet, before we behave expansively, we must be introspective. We bear the wounds of our hurts from wrongs inflicted from the outside, but also from our own sins, public and private. I invite you to enter into a moment of silence. Recall, if you dare, your most humiliating experience, shameful because of something you have done. How did you handle it? How long were you able to conceal it? Is it resolved today in the human family? Have you been honest and fair about it? How would you feel if that sorry affair became the news of the day? Suppose that and that alone were the measure by which you were known and judged.

[18:02]

The Prophet Jeremiah reminds us that more devious than all else is the human heart. Who can understand it? Only when our shameful deeds are forgiven can our wound be healed over. But who does the forgiving? In his homily last Sunday, Father Martin drew from the 62nd Psalm, reminding us that God's love is greater than life. Surely we long for forgiveness from the God of the prodigal family, the God who never tires of waiting for our return, who knows we can repent and reform and grow in grace and spiritual beauty. We learn from that parable to extend the same attitudes to others, the same expectancy.

[19:04]

Some 30 years ago, I learned the power of that attitude from a tearful woman in St. Cecilia's Church in Detroit. Its vibrant, charismatic pastor, Father Ray Ellis, had died of a heart attack. He was significantly important in that city for his death to have been the lead story on the evening news. The woman, like myself, had dropped whatever she was doing and immediately headed for the church. As I was leaving, overwhelmed by the testimonies of that black congregation, of the impact that that one minister had had on their lives, I found this woman trembling, weeping in the vestibule. I want to go to his coffin, she said, looking down the long majestic aisle, but I can't like this.

[20:12]

She wore a strapless red mini dress, leaving little doubt as to her profession. I lent her my jacket, and when she returned it, she spoke words that sank deep into my heart. She said, he was the only man who ever thought I could be more than what I am. Somewhere in the formula for forgiveness, there ought to be an expectation, an encouragement for the offenders, ourselves included, to be more than what they, more than what we are. We also need to beg forgiveness of ourselves and of those whom we've hurt or betrayed. Sometimes it's too late for the latter. How do we then enter into God's generous economy to make restitution in some alternative way?

[21:23]

The Sacrament of Reconciliation invites us to return to God with our whole hearts. Christ's gift of redemption is about giving sinners ourselves a second chance to live. The parable of the prodigal son consoles us with the message that God's love far exceeds our capacity to sin. We believe in God's love to forgive, God's forgiving love, more than we do our ability to emulate that. An old woman I know once asked, Who wrote the Our Father? I explained as best as I could. She countered, whoever wrote it down got it wrong. You know that part about forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those impossible. Too hard, Jesus would never ask us to do that.

[22:28]

Whoever wrote it down got it wrong. For many of us, it is too hard to forgive unaided. The psalmist reminds us, however, that God draws near to all who call on him. And this is another reason for us to seek strength in community. The person I just referred to has in common with unhappy people I've known in all walks of life, a refusal to relinquish the hurts of her life. In the childhood she shared with eight other siblings, she alone remembers relentless poverty. Despite trips and parties and holidays prepared by her family members, she insists she's never had a happy day in her life. Out of her rage have come numerous prescriptions for misery which she inserts into the lives of others.

[23:32]

She has no friends. The anger and discontent by which she has defined herself prevent her from enjoying the present or planning the future. She continues to give power to yesterday's hurts. We see this situation in many of our own families when members refuse to talk to one another year after year. At weddings, you have to keep them apart. You hope they won't come to the same holiday gatherings because they refuse to resolve those issues of alienation. Two weeks ago today, the Cherished Life Circle, which we established to address the painful subject of capital punishment, hosted its fourth annual service for families and friends of murder victims. About 200 people representing 30 families attended our interfaith candlelight service in Our Lady of Refuge Church in Brooklyn.

[24:40]

Father Michael Perry, known well to this monastery, is pastor there and a member of our cherished life circle. One family that came early and from some distance consisted of a husband and wife in their late 50s and a boy of about 10. Over refreshments, the man told me his story. Four years earlier, his son, Kenny, had been shot to death. Kenny's brother, unable to cope with the death, has become a street person. A few weeks after the murder, a woman from the South appeared at the couple's doorstep with a child of six, whom she said was Kenny's son. They didn't know they were grandparents. She didn't know Kenny had been murdered. Two months later, she was murdered. The child they brought with them was an orphan, having lost both parents to killers.

[25:43]

This grandfather who's raising the boy had suffered a stroke. He said he and his wife can barely cope. They haven't celebrated a single holiday since their son was killed four years ago. He said, the stranger who murdered my son killed my whole family. Sometimes grieving for a lost child or parent or spouse or friend Can thee the stone at the door to the heart that locks in the love required by the living? Like that ten-year-old boy, their grandson. It's clear that until this desolate man can get help enough to let go of the suffering, he will continue to increase it in his life and in the lives of those he cares about.

[26:47]

This situation only hints at the complexity of forgiveness. Permit me now to share my perceptions, infallible and incomplete, on the nature of forgiveness, its context and implications, and the limits of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not abstract and disconnected. It's rooted in pain, injustice, loss, and a sense of betrayal or abandonment. Are there limits to forgiveness? I think so, at least to a person's right to forgive. It's insensitive to suggest that we can all go and forgive everybody everything. If someone kills your best friend or your child, I have no right to forgive that killer. I hope the following story will stretch this out and provoke some serious thinking.

[27:48]

I draw from the core of Simon Wiesenthal's book, The Sunflower. Simon Wiesenthal, as many of you know, I suspect, was a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust years. The title of the book comes from his memories of rows upon rows of sunflowers in a cemetery where German soldiers were buried. Jews whom he knew, including all the members of his family, had died in gas ovens. They had no discoverable resting place, no tombstones, no sunflowers. The story has five elements, a prisoner, a dying man, a context, the evil, and response. While imprisoned in the concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day away from his work against his protest, disposing of medical waste at a hospital.

[28:50]

He was brought by a nurse, an insistent nurse, to the bedside of a tortured, dying, young Nazi soldier. The patient's face was wrapped in bandages only his eyes showed, and they were haunted by his crimes. He'd been raised Catholic, had given it up, and now near death, in the absence of a priest, he needed to confess to somebody. So he figured a Jew would do. He wanted absolution. Wiesenthal was there, terrified, emaciated under protest. The soldier described the way he and his comrades had herded a large number of Jews into a house, 73 I think the number was, locked the doors and set it ablaze. Trapped inside were women and children and old people.

[29:55]

Forgive me, the dying man implored. Struggling with his own rage, an appalled Wiesenthal said nothing. Back at the camp, he argued the matter with the other prisoners. What should he have done? Years after the war had ended, Wiesenthal continued to wonder if his silence were the right thing. What would you have done? Plagued by uncertainty, Wiesenthal includes in his book, The Sunflower, responses from 53 individuals, some of whose names you would recognize, theologians, political leaders, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, and victims of genocide in Bosnia, Cambodia, China, and Tibet. One response credible to me was this. I don't have it in my power to forgive you.

[30:58]

Throw yourself on the mercy of God in whom you believed. Ask God's forgiveness. The second came from Hans Habe, a Hungarian news reporter and editor during the Second World War. Forgiveness, he said, is the imitation of God. Punishment, too, is imitation of God. God punishes and God forgives in that order, but God never hates. Those last three words speak volumes to me. God never hates. Maybe the sin, but not the sinner. Not hating implies creating an environment where the offender can pursue virtue if he chooses. Not hating means removing obstacles to reformation.

[32:02]

Now, there's a second part to Wiesenthal's story, and it's this. The dying soldier at the same time asked Wiesenthal to deliver a letter to his mother in Germany, if in fact the prisoner survived the death camp. Months later, after liberation came, Wiesenthal carried the letter to the German mother. We don't know what was in his mind as he did that. He may have intended to reveal his hatred of her son and the deeds he perpetrated as a soldier. However, when he found the widow grieving for her only son living in post-war squalor with little understanding of what had happened, he couldn't hurt her anymore. He pretended to have received that letter from a stranger who had met her son. In fact, he again chose silence. Was it a form of forgiveness?

[33:04]

I don't know and he doesn't say. For the purpose of this reflection, I offer the dictionary's definition of forgiveness. The dictionary says forgiveness means to give up resentment against or the desire to punish, to stop being angry with, to pardon, to give up all claim to punish or exact penalty for an offense, to cancel a debt. How many times can we do this? 70 times 7? Forgiveness sets the sinner free, but it also frees the forgiver from lugging around the burden of anger. It allows her to devote her energies to worthier enterprises. We are all wounded people. Who wounds us? Often those we love.

[34:06]

Often those who love us. At times we feel abandoned, betrayed. Why weren't you there for me? Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting. The memory, even the wound, may stay forever. How do we forgive parents who have abused us? How do children forgive parents for divorcing? Or parents their children for betraying their values? How do people forgive doctors for their bad advice? Friends for their insensitivity to suffering? How do we forgive God for the death of a loved one or a crippling disease? The way in which we cope with suffering alters us, making us stronger or weaker. Many of us know the story of the poet Maya Angelou. When she was six, she was raped and hospitalized. She knew her attacker and identified him. He was captured, jailed, and released.

[35:11]

The next day, his body was discovered. He had been beaten to death. Now the young Maya blamed herself for her rapist step because she had spoken his name. At that point, she stopped talking. For the next six years, she entered into what she called her soledad. She read everything she could get her hands on. She memorized the works of the great poets, many plays, all of Shakespeare's sonnets. When she decided to use her voice again, she had much to say and the tools with which to say it. In a symposium on the problem of evil some years ago, she shared this story and her formula for self-healing. Name the evil. Forgive it. Let it go. But now the hard part.

[36:13]

How does one forgive a murderer? Some can't. Some, like Bud Welch, who lost his 23-year-old daughter Julie in the Oklahoma City bombing, had to, to honor his daughter's memory and to save himself from self-destruction by rage. Bud Welch's public forgiveness of Timothy McVeigh and his outreach to the bomber's father had an impact on Patrick Reeder, who lost his wife in that 1995 bombing. For months, Reader harbored consuming hatred and a desire to kill McVeigh himself. He could think of nothing else. He lost an enormous amount of weight, turned to drink and disruptive violent behavior. Bud Welch's comments in the media first disgusted, then challenged him. Mr. Reader felt himself in a black hole of rage and revenge and sorrow.

[37:21]

He told the New York Times, I was turning into a beast. I started to think, who is a better person, McVeigh or me? In the end, Reader was one of few of his family members who opposed McVeigh's execution last June. Although he remained bothered by the bomber's lack of remorse, he believes that executing him removes the impetus to examine his own complex feelings about justice and forgiveness. He said he understood the desire of many to eliminate McVeigh, adding, I felt that way myself. I wanted him silenced, but I also wanted my conscience silenced. Let me tell you about Marietta Yeager Lane. More than 20 years ago, she was with her family in a camping trip in her home state of Montana. One night, while all were asleep, someone cut a hole in the tent and snatched her seven-year-old daughter, Susie.

[38:30]

A massive search yielded no clues. After about six fruitless months, Marietta had a dream which convinced her that a little girl was in heaven. Six months later on the first anniversary of the abduction, she received a taunting phone call from the kidnapper. He told her he was holding her daughter captive and was teaching her to forget her family. Marietta, who had accepted the child's death and had prayed for strength and for the gift of forgiveness, gently asked the caller, what can I do to help you? The caller hung up. Marietta reported the call to the priest, excuse me, to the police. Encouraged by her sympathy, the man called back, allowing the police to trace the call and to capture the killer.

[39:33]

The 28-year-old Vietnam veteran had taken the little girl to an abandoned farmhouse where he kept her locked in a closet. He molested her, killed her, and ate some of her flesh. Only by offering that description can I convey Marietta's incredible courage. She didn't have a chance to forgive the man because he committed suicide in prison. But she had to forgive him for her own sake and this is her explanation. Forgiveness is a letting go of the desire for punishment and instead taking up the idea of restoration. Restoration. Putting things back in some good order, although it may not be the same order. Forgiveness, she adds, means feeling concern, even love for the offender.

[40:35]

Today, Marietta Yeager-Lane is a prominent member of Families of Murder Victims for Reconciliation. Like you, I marvel at her capacity for forgiveness. There's nothing more personal than the murder of a child. Many of the evils we experience though are not personal, they're communal, societal. We suffer and react as we are doing now as part of a group or a nation. The Etnaese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh suggests the way of proceeding. Reconciliation, he says, is to understand both sides, to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by that side, then to go to the other side and describe the suffering endured by the first side. Abraham Heschel reminds us of what may be a deeper dimension. The prophet, he says, has to see all human experience from God's point of view.

[41:41]

Since Cain slew Abel, individuals and nations have resorted to violence to eliminate threats or competition or settle disputes. Most claim the right to do this based on the perils and exigencies of a given time. Here in Mark Twain country, I'm reminded of the wisdom of that author's remarkable parable published at his request after his death. It's called The War Prayer. How many of you know that? The War Prayer? Ah, good. He created it in 1923. The book is out of print now, but I checked. The Steele Memorial Library has two copies. Twain sets it in the context of patriotic fervor attending the start of a war. The parish church is filled with overflowing, with citizens proud of their young men's willingness to defend their country.

[42:45]

Their minister leads them in a rallying prayer for victory. He concludes fervently, eyes closed, with these words, O Lord, our Father, our young and patriotic idols of our hearts go forth to battle. Be thou near them. With them in spirit, we also go from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. When he opens his eyes, he finds standing near him a dark robed man who takes the microphone and cautions the congregation to be aware of what they pray for. With each prayer, there is a shadow prayer. He intones the consequences of the minister's prayer. The unspoken words. Here are some excerpts. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells.

[43:53]

Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain. Help us lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire. Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief. Help us to turn them out, roofless with their little children, to wander unfriended the waste of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst." And so Twain continues through a host of images and then We ask this in the spirit of love, who is the source of love, and who is ever faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset, and seek his aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. The old man then dares the congregation to pray the pastor's prayer now, if they can.

[44:55]

And he leaves the church, a grim specter exiting. The story concludes, it was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic because there was no sense in what he said. In our own real world, it's often true that we who seek and extend forgiveness, who encourage reconciliation in families and among nations, who believe in the limitless possibilities of redemption and repentance and alternatives to violence, are also believed to be less than sane. As we recognize the affliction of being harshly judged, we can realize that our own harsh judgments can be impediments to reconciliation, especially if we judge on the basis of the worst thing a person's ever done as if it were the worst thing he's done.

[46:00]

This presentation began with a tribute to the hospitality of Mount Savior. and the need for us to create safe and healing places, in fact, to sometimes be those places where people can come for solace. I'd like to tell you about two children, both 10 years old, one wearing brown shoes, the other with blood on his sneakers. First, the boy in brown shoes. He came hesitantly into the vestibule of the big Brooklyn church where we held our first service for families of murder victims. This boy was dressed in his Sunday best right down to the shoes instead of sneakers. Thinking he was in the wrong place, I asked him why he'd come. My mama sent me, he said. She'd heard that had been murdered a few weeks earlier. Someone hastily wrote his brother's name on an eight and a half by 11 card, which he, like the others, then wore around his neck.

[47:12]

We put him in a pew with mothers. After some hymns, a scripture reading, and a reflection by a woman whose son had been murdered, we called the names on the cards. Each bearer came forth. lit his or her candle from the Paschal candle and formed a semicircle in the sanctuary facing the congregation. When the little guy's brother's name was called, he walked out of the pew bravely. Then his shoulders crumpled and he started to cry. Mothers embraced him and led him to the sanctuary. What that child learned that day was the supportive, loving faith of a community of understanding and solace. This was a gathering devoid of cause for vengeance. After the service, everyone retired to the basement for refreshments. I looked for the child.

[48:13]

I actually ran out into the street to look for him, but there was no sign of him, no trace. He remains a legacy, a reminder of the legacy of faith and forgiveness we owe our children. And now, the boy with blood on his shoes. He and his brother and sister suffered vicious psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of their drug-addicted, transient parents. One day, a kind aunt gave the 10-year-old a puppy. Immediately, the children bonded with the mud as children always do. When their mother came home and discovered the puppy, she put it in a burlap bag, and as the children looked on, she clubbed it to death. Then, as the 10-year-old boy sobbed, she forced him to drag the bag to the river and dump the corpse.

[49:14]

That's how the blood got on his sneakers. I don't know the name of the boy in the brown shoes, but I do know the name of the boy who had blood on his sneakers. His name is David Paul Hammer. By the time the boy, David, was 16, he was a drug addict bent on a life of crime. At 19, he went to jail for armed robbery and attempted murder. With the exception of two jail breaks, he's been incarcerated ever since. He's now 43 and anticipating execution on death row in Terre Haute. He came uninvited into my life three years ago and has changed me forever. During the 1993 New York State gubernatorial race in which the restoration of the death penalty was a key issue, a small group of us sisters, priests, and lay people formed a cherished life circle.

[50:16]

Our goal was to pray together and to provide opportunities to examine the difficult issue of capital punishment. We wanted to add to the public discourse the gifts of civility, respect, and the teachings of our faith. We circulated a declaration of life. That document says that if the signer is murdered, he or she doesn't want the killer executed. The declaration is a catalyst for conversation. Many, many thousands have now signed it. I have some copies in the dining room. You can take a look at it. Every few years, some newspaper reporter finds it intriguing and does an article which then gets circulated by the Associated Press and a whole lot of publicity follows. One article reached David.

[51:19]

His letter began. Dear Cherished Life Circle, my name is David Paul Hammer. I'm scheduled to be executed by the federal government on January 14th, 1993. I'm looking for someone to, excuse me, 1999. I'm looking for someone to pray for me and my victim, Andrew Marti, whom I killed in prison, and for the Marti family. I would like someone to serve as a spiritual advisor for the remaining days of my life. I had never visited a prisoner. I'd visited jails, but not a prison. I had no desire to do so. I'm an academic. I wanted to write and talk about the death penalty. It was shortly before Christmas. I made lots of calls to Pennsylvania, where the Allynwood prison is. No one seemed able to go. So I went. Soon afterward, David received a stay of execution and was transferred to Terre Haute, where he now is.

[52:26]

With God's grace and the encouragement of others, David has confessed, repented, and is attempting some sort of restitution by raising money to help abused children. The Christmas cards in the front part of the portery are his effort, with my support, to do that. He knows, as does Marietta Jaeger, that it's impossible to change the past or to restore the shattered order of things. He can only sow some seeds of love where hatred once reigned. The death penalty, of course, would be a topic of another talk. I will say here only that I recognize the difficulty this issue poses for good people, including family members closest to me. I understand well the words that Jesus spoke to Peter in John's Gospel. When you were young, you girded yourselves and went where you chose to go. When you are old, another will lead you to places you have not chosen.

[53:31]

David has led me to those places. At this time, the Supreme Court has rejected all of his appeals. He anticipates a 2002 execution date. At his request, I will be with him when he dies. That will be the hardest thing I've ever done. I've witnessed his conversion, his entrance into the Catholic Church last year, his confirmation and first communion, all on death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the presence of Archbishop Beakline. It was the first mass celebrated on Terre Haute's death row. The four men who attended that service looked out from separate cages into which the Eucharistic Lord entered. One final, somewhat related story. For the past seven years, I've begged family and friends to honor my October birthday by giving me men's white socks.

[54:42]

wrapped in Christmas paper. Now, of course, it sounds weird. I have that reputation among my family. One of our sisters, Mary O'Connor, is a long-time chaplain at the men's house of detention in Rikers. She used to use her allowance to provide the socks for the men who attend midnight mass. So now I am able to provide those for her, and every, well, most of the time, I go Christmas Eve just to help her distribute them. Last year, a photographer came. On Christmas Day, the Daily News carried a large photo of Mary handing a prisoner a package with me in the background looking on. One of my policeman nephews, Michael, had something to say about that on Christmas Day. These are his words. We're some family, Aunt Camille. I send them to Rikers, and you give them socks. So in our diversity, in our varied experiences, we struggle to be faithful to the words of Isaiah, which hold a formula in a love song to heal our wounds.

[56:01]

In conclusion, I believe we must be willing to name the evil that afflicts us, realizing that to ignore or cling to it gives continuing power to the person or evil that wounded us to begin with. I believe some sins are inexcusable, but no person is unforgivable. There are some sins we don't have the power to forgive. Only God has that power. Our challenge is to learn from and move away from the sins that wound us. Out of our efforts to remain faithful to God's redemptive love, we try to encourage other sinners to have faith, to reform their lives, and to replace evil with goodness. We ourselves try to see things as God sees them. Finally, I believe in a just and merciful God, a God who punishes and forgives

[57:11]

but who never hates. It's in this manner that I believe we are challenged to love God and our neighbor. Then and only then will our wounds and the wounds of this hurting world be healed. I know you're not clapping for me.

[58:19]

Does anyone have any additions or corrections or subtractions or alterations that would like to ask Sister Camille? Vince, who are you pointing at? Did somebody over here have a hand up? I understand that the person doesn't think he's going to pass. So it does this much more harm than the person doesn't think it will. Yes, that has been documented. I have read about that because I've tried to read extensively on the subject, but there was also a report that was carried by the three major news stations in New York about television stations, the networks, about, I'd say about two months ago, which documented exactly this, that the retention

[59:24]

of anger, the lack of forgiveness produces a kind of, and they use the word kind of a poison in the person. It can have psychological results certainly, but also physical. And it leads, it can lead to a kind of depression, a low grade or high grade, I guess, depression. But you're right on that. Thank you. Yes. I think Well, I'm not sure that I got the whole of your question, but I think what you're saying, I think you're saying that a life sentence is not enough to, are you saying that it's not enough to protect the guards?

[60:37]

I understand that. I think what you're saying is one of the compelling arguments that people use to support the death penalty. They say, well, if you eliminate the person, then certainly you eliminate the threat of any possible further killing. That's what I hear you saying. But you also eliminate the possibility of repentance. You eliminate the possibilities of experiencing the fruits of redemption. So what do you do? Well, I think that those who run the prisons have to be more cautious with people who are violent and who have tendencies toward violence. I can walk into a subway tomorrow when I'm home in New York, and I can be killed by somebody who is violent or insane. I think that the threat remains all the time, and that it is tempting, as seductive as it may be, to say, well, you maximize security by eliminating those who are violent.

[62:05]

I don't think that's the best way to handle it. Now, the man that I have served as spiritual guide to, David, to whom I alluded, at one point he dropped all his appeals and he wanted death. And when I spoke to him about it, he said, because sometimes I'm afraid I would kill again. So what you do with, well, first of all, security is so tight in Terre Haute. I don't know how they can do anything. I mean, it's incredibly tight. But I think it's the responsibility of the administrators to provide an environment which allows security for those who do the guarding, but which also provides enough incentives to the incarcerated so that they won't be so filled with rage that they'll want to kill again. Now in Terre Haute there's a man who is absolutely insane, I'm sure of it. He is stark naked, he doesn't wear clothes, he hasn't bathed in two years, he's on death row there.

[63:11]

What kind of help? I don't think he's a threat to anybody but himself. But there are all kinds of things that should happen in prisons. That man should have some kind of cares. So I know, I realize, I recognize that is an incomplete and unsatisfactory answer. But from our history I know we do not apply preventive, punitive measures. in general, any more than we apply the same kind of punishment to the criminal. For instance, we don't rob the robber or rape the rapist, you know, but we do kill the one who kills. It's a complex thing, and I apologize for not having a good answer. I probably should have said nothing. But there you go. Yes, way in the back. This is very hard for me to read. It's a page in my bullet books of the 181 Constitution of my middle life. In the DNA of a black person, one thing is only the spirit that I see him every day.

[64:17]

He's in the box. He's in the box, he's in a cell, in a link of some, well, once a day, every hour, for a recreation in the city, more or less. But the reason he is there is because he killed somebody inside the wall. And he will never get out of the, what we call a chute, the box. What concerns me about this more than anything is Every Sunday, this man goes with the news. And, you know, I just walk by and I respond, because I wasn't breathing. God gave me my children and a boss. We've been through so much stuff, our mixed emotions. God, man, faith. It's so complex. And it's very, this is a very complex situation we're in. I think only God can judge evil. Yes, I think that we walk with trust into very dark and dangerous places and that is a much more dramatic example than those that we experience individually.

[65:23]

Anyone else? Yes, Brother Pierre. But, uh, we've got to stick with it. We've been stuck with that for a very, very long time. Uh, we don't know how to be aware of the only thing that we need to forget. We've just had to fight with it. It's talking about it. make up those people. I remember it vividly, the fathers of the church, the reverends, you know, some of them, you know, they were part of some of the other ventures, that we should extend it to other dioceses far away, you know, the next year, but a lot of them, maybe three years later, when the primary plan And all the other victims said, OK, then send him back. And it's not based, you can see that he was not a good actor.

[66:28]

But he was on there for a while. You know, Brother Pierre, I think that what you do is raise the possibility of alternatives to the kind of rigid, unbending, inflexible measures that we take for granted and we allow to happen at taxpayers' expense, you know, in the name of God and country. I think some years ago of a woman who was executed in Texas, which has the largest number of executions, Carla Faye Tucker. If there was ever a person who had convinced everyone around her that she had truly, truly repented, it was that woman. And yet she was executed, despite the good that she was doing, the history of recovery and remorse and good work inside prison.

[67:30]

So it's a very hard situation. And it's very hard to be faithful to our perception and to the desire for a better world, even for those who live in cages. against the public opinion, which, thank God, is changing, slowly but surely. Yes? Well, I think Mario Cuomo, who was one of the first signers of the Declaration of Life, I think he signed it the first day we circulated it. One of the things that he said, if his daughter were to be murdered, he would certainly, his first impulse would be the kind of rage that I refer to in Patrick Reedy and Bud Welsh.

[68:32]

He would want to kill the killer himself, with his bare hands. But he says, I would hope that the impact of my faith and the good experiences that I've had in my life would transform me into something other than a brutal retaliator who chooses the same method. as the person who would have destroyed my child. So I think certainly he would be an example. The governor of Illinois just came to that decision because he recognized that so many innocent people, well not so many, but one is too many, but there were numbers are executed, and this is the case all over. Most of the people who are on death row are poor, are minorities. There is document, this great documentation, a book called The Innocence Project by Shrek. Barry. check and write Jim Dwyer from New York.

[69:38]

There are three authors. And it's documented, you know, all the errors, especially by eyewitnesses who are the least reliable of all the sources of... Did I answer your question? Yeah, okay. I think that there are many prominent people who have gone through their own struggle and who have come down on their feet saying, whatever it costs me, whatever it means, I, at this point of my life, cannot believe that God wants us to kill people. Not as long as there are other ways to safeguard, reasonable, maybe not perfect, but reasonable ways to safeguard the population inside and outside of prison. Now, everybody isn't there. I think that this grace is that. It is a grace. And it's not given cheaply and we can claim it if we don't feel it. People who feel differently from the way I feel have to struggle with their own perception at this time.

[70:43]

You may hold on to that forever and that may be kind of a kind of that challenge to us who oppose the death penalty to keep thinking about it. You know, but together we pray for God's wisdom and God's grace in this. Not by saying anyone's better or worse because of what they feel, but that they're true to what they feel at a given time. Yes, Father. How do we deal with people who do some ministry in prison? and be told that you're too nice to them, that they're using all their negative manipulation on you. At one point, I'm telling them that the really close to the court sides, people on the periphery,

[71:46]

Well, you know, I think it's one of the risks that you take in any trying to establish right relationships in any difficult circumstance. Surely, I think we all know that very few people in prison are guilty according to their own protestation. Most of the people in jail are innocent if you take it from them and their attorneys. And in fact, some are. But I think there's always the possibility of people who are in prison to con us to death. And some of us are more susceptible to that kind of conning than others. But our task is not to judge them or exclude them. but to try to bring out of them the best that they can. There are few enough positive influences inside prisons. So we try to make it easier for them to be good. Whether that goodness includes faith or not, and sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, I think we can only do what we can.

[72:59]

And if we're wrong, if we're made fools of, if we are used or misused or laughed at, We wouldn't be the first, you know, to be fools for Christ. I would never be too soft on a person. That's one of the things that I have found in my relationship with David. I visit him twice a year for two days. I speak to him every two weeks and I write to him weekly. Now this is a privilege, a spiritual relationship privilege that I have. But I never ever let him get away with something that I'm not comfortable with. So I think there's a responsibility if you're in a directing position to challenge, not to contradict everything, but to challenge and to ask questions and to try to firm up the honesty that people struggle to have but sometimes don't have well because of their fears and their past experiences, their own batterings and being battered.

[73:59]

The nicest chaplain in Terre Haute was a Protestant minister called Bill Lang. He was a big giant of a man who had four sons. He's probably in his late 30s, who really knew the system, who went about and got the best out of everybody, got privileges for the men that others didn't get, but all within the system and was booted out of there. He's now in West Virginia for exactly that. He was seen as being too nice to the men. Only by going into a prison, especially a maximum security death row, do you see how little niceness there is, how small the comfort, how great the misery, which goes on for some for 20, 30, 40 years, sometimes for a crime committed in the madness of one moment. that the sinner would do anything on earth to retract if such things were powerful or possible, but they're not.

[75:06]

Yes, brother. Would you like to say a few words about systemic acts? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. Thank you very much, Brother David. That so many times those who become the worst oppressors or the greatest criminals in society are people who have been programmed sometimes under the guise of patriotism to manifest the worst behavior. They were supposed to apply it to the enemy.

[76:13]

But sometimes the enemy becomes everybody. I think about Timothy McVeigh, who learned about collateral damage, that horrible term, which he applied to the innocent victims of the Oklahoma war. He learned about that in the Persian Gulf War. That's where he learned that. And then it was patriotic to bring that kind of killing and devastation to some other people. But it doesn't apply here. So all I can say about that is that we have a responsibility to challenge our government on policies that are dangerous. This is the weekend when they had the big protest at the School of the Americas, which trained so many terrorists who went especially into Central America who killed Archbishop Romero, the four nuns, the eight Jesuits, and the whole thing. Something that we deny, and yet the proof was there.

[77:15]

It was absolute. So yes, systemic injustice. So if you do all these things we've talked about today, be prepared to be laughed at, to be a minority, you know, to be called naive or unpatriotic or any of those things. But, you know, the final word is we try to look at things from the standpoint of God. How does God see this mixed up human family? So thank you. We are very grateful for you all being here. And as you know, in a minute or two, we have vespers. So if everybody but Tom Kern can stand up, kind of jiggle your mind a bit, and then sit back down again.

[78:21]

Tom has excused from standing up and sitting down. He's not Islamic in his prayer. So we're just a few minutes, but you should stand up and move around just a little bit, jiggle your brains. Okay. Let's see.

[79:26]

Okay. th [...] Questioner 2 says, I have a question.

[81:14]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[82:32]

Yeah. What? Thank you.

[84:07]

Thank you. you. It's good. Thank you very much. It's really fantastic.

[85:36]

It's fantastic. It's really fantastic. I just have nervousness. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

[86:47]

Okay. Oh. This seems to work better than the bell. Apparently it was wrong and we all didn't hear it. O Lord, I do not hesitate O Lord, O Lord, have mercy upon me Pray that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit might go up now and for evermore amen.

[88:58]

Alleluia. May our prayers be heard You throw a single bomb, your aim is in the second square as we go. And you're not seeing a lot of us. Even though a little bit of us, we'll find a lot of you. And we'll stick with you on our long journey. In your unwavering breath you keep warm all the way, Lord of all. Out of the depths of the deep, to the heavens, we know your star. The love of Christ is in your hands, Lord of all. Oh, have mercy on me.

[90:14]

I wish that I could pray for my father. I ask the Lord that he may help me. I wish to obey my father. When I am all the way up the hill, and through the valleys we go, there is no place for us, if we break not our word. Although it's very hard not to sing, we ask you to return the light.

[91:17]

And if we follow the way of the sun, we then should think that the sun is right there on the hill. In the pathway of love, if you want to gain the promise of love, you must undertake a path of peace, and never reach the way of sin. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, Alleluia, [...] alleluia, Come.

[92:33]

Come. [...] to hold your voice. Or may the sun fill in on your earth and grow over the ice. I'll know you before the morning light. The darkness will never be my change. You are a beast forever, but a beast that will be said no more. Shalom.

[93:35]

Shalom. There's a lot we have to study for this year, but we'll have time for it later on.

[94:10]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JI