First of Advent Year C
November 2010
In the years following the long and bitter conflict in South Africa, and to some extent in Northern Ireland, great efforts were made to search for the truth and bring about reconciliation.
Like all such efforts it was partially successful and partly unsuccessful.
I will always remember the scene of a tough white security man embracing a fat black African mother whose son he had tortured and murdered and the location of who’s body he could no longer remember. Both were in tears and both were hugging each other in shared grief and forgiveness.
This kind of scene happened many times on both sides of the colour divide. In all these cases the truth and the acceptance of this truth was essential. It was the acknowledgement of the possibility, that the way I was brought up and the things I was brought up to believe in might be flawed, that opened the door to mutual understanding and forgiveness. And what a relief; what peace it brought to those who embraced it.
I once heard an extremely tough and much feared U.D.F. assassin say that he had no doubt that if he had been born on the Falls Road rather than on the Shankill he would have been an I.R.A. gunman.
Such an acknowledgment is a big step towards mutual understanding.
Acknowledging the truth is a great healer. It brings true repentance as well as compassion and forgiveness from those wronged.
What really hardens the victims heart against the perpetrator is the refusal or inability of the latter to entertain the possibility of wrongdoing or the need for change.
(Is this not the nub of the ongoing conflict between our Church leadership and the victims of abuse?).
Advent is certainly the time for truth and reconciliation.
In the spiritual life truth is called humility. Humility is the essential foundation for all spiritual development.
What is more off-putting that the Pharisee who prayed thus; ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity.’
I am probably being totally naïve in suggesting, that sometime during Advent, partners (married or otherwise) ask him/her this question, ‘Is there something I need to stop doing to make life better for you?’
The trick is to restrain yourself from hitting the roof in total incomprehension and denial at what you might be told.