FatherRon.com

If you’ve been to a grocery store since March, chances are you had
this experience or something similar to it:
You were looking for a particular brand or product that the store just
could not keep in stock: staples like milk, eggs, tuna fish, soap – and
who will ever forget the Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020? Part of the
problem was the supply chain could not keep up with the new demands
of so many people suddenly being home all day – but a big part of the
problem were the “hoarders”: people who stockpiled many of these
staples, managing to snap them up as soon as clerks could re-stock the
shelves.
So you complained – too loudly and angrily, perhaps – to the
manager of the store. You went through the entire litany: how you have
been a loyal customer of this store for years, that this pandemic has been
difficult for you and your family, that it’s unfair that a few people should
be able to snap up everything, etc. The manager listened politely and
apologized profusely. Maybe he or she would save you a roll of TP or a
dozen eggs. Then, the next time you shopped, you found a product that had been
out of stock for weeks. Your heart leapt for joy! Never could you
imagine that hand sanitizer could be the cause of such elation; you
grabbed the tomato soup as if you had found the Holy Grail. You
resolved that you would not do without this again, so you filled your cart
with as many cans or boxes or bags of the product as you could push.
Did it ever dawn on you that someone else would now do without
because of your “stocking up”?
Or you may have experienced this: You’re at the bank to conduct
some business and the customer ahead of you seems to be renegotiating
the debt of a small European country; he or she has managed to tie up
not just one but several tellers and an assistant manager while you and
others wait. It’s finally your turn and, without realizing it, you take up
more than your fair share of their time with One more thing, Before I
forget, and As long as I’m here…….
Or you’re looking for help at the hardware store or home center and
you wait and wait while another customer has collared a clerk in search of the right nut and bolt. Finally, finally! – it’s your turn. And you
found that you had more questions about your project than you thought – as other customers waited. You had become the kind of shopper you
had complained about, the would-be-do-it-yourselfer who needed more
help than you realized.
It’s not much of a leap from being the forgiver to the forgiven. The
servant’s cruel treatment of his fellow servant begins with his forgetting
that he was once indebted and forgiven. Such forgiveness does not
come easily: it requires overcoming our own anger and outrage at the
hurt we have suffered and re-focusing our concern, instead, on the
person who wronged us; it means possessing the humility to face the
hurt we have inflicted on others as a result of our insensitivity and self-
centeredness. But only in such forgiving and seeking forgiveness are we
able to realize the possibility of bringing healing and new life to a pained
and grieving situation. Christ calls us to create within our families and
communities that king of environment in which forgiveness is joyfully
offered and humbly but confidently sought. It begins by recognizing our
own indebtedness, our own failings that divide and hurt – often without
our realizing it.