WE ARE IN the holiest season of our Christian calendar, the season of Lent.
Lent offers us the opportunity to grow in our relationship with God and to deepen our commitment to our baptismal covenant.
Lent allows us to reflect on our patterns, to pray more deeply, to experience sorrow for what we've done and failed to do, to reach out to a loving God and to be generous to those in need or those being marginalized.
It's a time to make a change from where we've been to become what we should be.
Almost every Lent, I find myself dwelling on all that has happened in my life. I marvel at where I am and what my life has become, despite the errors of my past. In many ways, I'm living proof of the redemptive nature of God, which we honor during Lent. I find it hard to let go of certain of my wrongdoings. I know that, intellectually, I'm forgiven, but in my heart, I still grieve in my brokenness as a human.
Recently, my past from 22 years ago resurfaced in a very public way. At the young age of 23, I served jail time for foolishly misappropriating funds from a family business I once co-owned.
The incident was not something I have hidden. I often use it to illustrate to my college students and parishioners the awesome love, forgiveness and redemption of God.
Deep down, however, I still hurt. I still feel as if I'm back in my early 20s, dealing with all the pain and anguish that my actions caused. I don't think I was a particularly bad person, just one who made a few bad choices.
And here I am now in my mid-40s and having been a priest for several years and serving those whose lives are broken, too. Yet, I can't seem to find a way to heal myself.
Ironically, I've helped others find what I'm seeking. I've embraced the dying when their last wish was to hear words of forgiveness from a priest. I've been in a prison cell and touched the hands of someone who believed he was irredeemable. I've blessed unions of couples who felt distant from God, and forgiven murderers on their deathbeds.
But I cannot forgive myself.
So this Lent, I committed to figuring out why. My conclusion was as startling as it was real: It is my fellow Christians.
You see, as my prior conviction surfaced, so did vitriol and hate from people who don't even know me. The words that were levied at me stung. The banter reopened wounds I thought were long healed. I reflected that sticks and stones would've been more welcome than barbed words that are never supposed to hurt.
