HURT MOUNTAIN: THROUGH FORGIVENESS INTO LOVE
Yesterday I was pleased to be invited to a Couples for Christ home for prayer, song, scripture reading, discussion, and fellowship. The scripture reading was John 15:9-17, on love. I can’t remember whether it was the discussion leader or the first person who shared that coupled love with forgiveness, but it seemed a good fit, and almost everyone who shared as we went from person to person retained the same linkage. It almost seems that it is mainly by going past, over, under or around our personal sense of being hurt that we find love on the other side. Maybe already existing love for someone, say, a family member, gets blocked too, when a severe hurt is interposed.
Anyway, Father Mark’s homily for the Sunday Mass today on EWTN reinforced my sense that the two, love and forgiveness, are strongly related and linked in most peoples minds. Father also considered the same John Gospel passage on love, and folded considerations on forgiveness into his remarks without rationale for linking them.
I guess most people are nursing some severe hurt or hurts standing between them and the kind of love they would like to have. Still, I like to think that there other pathways to love than blasting through Hurt Mountain.
