Good Morning, Everyone. Yesterday morning, at the eight o’clock
 Mass, I was sitting innocently at the back of the Church when
 Father Aidan was up here. And he said to the people, “I hope that
 during the last month you haven’t found it too difficult to
 understand Father Brendan’s Belfast accent.” And then he said, “I
 am from Banbridge, and my accent is much more cosmopolitan.” Now,
 for those who don’t know, for those who aren’t familiar with
 Ireland, Banbridge is a little village in the mountains. It’s not
 exactly the most cosmopolitan place in the world. But they believe
 that they are very cosmopolitan. And when Father Aidan said that, I
 remembered a story I heard some time ago about three old men in
 Banbridge. They were great friends and they spent their whole lives
 together. One evening, they went out for a drink, and they were
 talking a little bit. And one of the old men was an atheist. He
 didn’t believe in God. (And there are a lot of those in Banbridge!)
 But, at one stage, during the discussion (See, Father Aidan is not
 in the Church this morning. So I can say these things.) he kind of
 lost his temper and he banged his fist on the table, and he said,
 “I was born an atheist. I live as an atheist, and with the help of
 God, I will die as an atheist!” .... Need I say more?
 
 The gospel that we just listened to this morning comes from a
 beautiful time in the life of Jesus when the disciples were
 beginning to follow him. And he was trying to instruct the
 disciples about how they should live their lives as his followers,
 the things they should do, the things they should say, and
 naturally they had questions. And one of those questions was simply
 about prayer, “Lord, we want to know how to pray.” And, in
 answering their question, Jesus gave them those beautiful words
 which have become for us the Our Father. The Our Father has always,
 from the very beginning, been a very important part of our
 Christian tradition of prayer. For most of us, it’s the first
 prayer that we learn as children. And, indeed, every single time
 that we gather to celebrate the Eucharist we always pray the Our
 Father. In other words, it’s a prayer that we all know very well.
 But sometimes, there can be a danger that we can be so familiar
 with a particular prayer that we can rhyme through the words
 without really thinking of what we are saying. And, therefor, there
 is the danger that we could lose the full impact of this wonderful
 prayer. And sometimes therefor, we need to stop in our tracks. We
 need to stop for the moment and to reflect on what it is that we
 are saying when we use those words, what it is that we are
 committing ourselves to when we use those words.
 
 One of the great saints in the Church, St. Augustine, certainly had
 that experience when it came to the Our Father. And, at one stage
 in his life, he decided that he would spend an entire night
 reflecting and meditating on the Our Father. He would stay awake
 all night and think about this great prayer. And so, as the sun
 went down, he began his meditation, and stayed there for hours and
 hours and hours. Next morning, as the sun began to come up, he had
 reached these words, ”Who art in heaven.” In other words, he had
 spent all these hours and not gotten very far. And, indeed, I think
 that captures an important truth, that we could spend a thousand
 years reflecting on the Our Father without exhausting its meaning,
 without reaching the depths of the profundity of that wonderful
 prayer, which tells us so much about how close God is to us, the
 compassion that he has for us, and indeed the forgiveness that he
 offers us.
 
 This morning for a few moments, I would like to reflect with you
 just on one phrase from that prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as
 we forgive those who trespass against us.” And I would like to
 reflect with you on that phrase because it is the one that I find
 most difficult to deal with in my own life. That call of Jesus to
 forgiveness is the one that I struggle with most of my own life. It
 is the one that I find most difficult to take on board and to put
 into practice as I live my life. Of course, later on in the gospel,
 Jesus will explain that further and he will say to his followers,
 “Love your enemies. Pray for those who hate you. Bless those who
 curse you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other
 cheek and let them strike you there as well.” These are extremely
 difficult and demanding words that Jesus is asking of us because
 they seem to go against our natural instincts which would call us
 towards revenge. Yet Jesus is asking us to take a different route.
 
 One of the most traumatic experiences in my own life was a time, a
 few years ago, when I was accused of something in the wrong by a
 person who I had considered to be a very good friend. And there was
 all kinds of pain and hurt that I felt at that time, not only for
 being wrongly accused, but also for losing a friendship which was
 important to me. And the scars and the wounds of that experience
 stayed with me for quite some time. Even though in my work as a
 parish missioner I was going from parish to parish and encouraging
 other people to forgive, I wasn’t able to do it myself. As I guess
 we all know from experience, that it’s easy to give advice to other
 people but not put it into practice in one’s own life. It was an
 extremely difficult occasion. And I would imagine that practically
 everybody here in this church this morning could echo that
 experience of being hurt by somebody that you care deeply about.
 Perhaps there are people here who have suffered within their
 marriage or within their relationship. Very often, people
 experience great suffering because of their parents or because of
 their children. Parents can experience great anguish when they see
 their children living a kind of life that they wouldn’t have chosen
 for them. And then I suppose the most common source of hurt comes
 to us when people misunderstand us, when people talk about us or
 gossip about us or try to take away our reputation. As I say, the
 wounds from an experience like that can take a very long time to heal.
 
 Sometimes I think when we talk about forgiveness in Church, we talk
 about it in a way that underestimates how difficult it really is.
 We can talk about forgiveness as if it were some kind of a water
 tap that we can turn on and turn off at will. Yet, all of us know
 from our own experiences how intensely difficult it is to forgive,
 and the deeper the hurt caused to us the longer it can take. Of
 course, we know very well that, in life, the deepest hurts can
 often be caused to us by the people that we love the most. And, in
 those moments when we are hurt, in those moments when people do
 wrong to us, and I say very often our natural instinct is to seek
 revenge. Our natural calling, if you like, is to try to get even,
 to give as good as we take, to not let the other person away with
 it, or, as the Bible says, to take an eye for an eye and a tooth
 for a tooth. But Mahatma Ghandi, that wonderful man from India,
 used to say that if we lived by that philosophy of an eye for an
 eye and a tooth for a tooth, then all we end up with is a whole
 world full of blind and toothless people. Nothing else! In other
 words, the desire for revenge gets us nowhere. It benefits no one.
 It does absolutely no good whatsoever. It is wasted energy. Now, as
 I say, when we do experience hurt in our lives, it’s the easiest
 thing in the world to take revenge. It’s the easiest thing in the
 world to get our own back and be satisfied with ourselves. But
 Jesus calls us to do something which is much more difficult. He
 calls us to do something which is much harder, to forgive and to
 let go. And Jesus asks us to do the thing that is hardest because
 he knows that that is also the best thing for us, because if we go
 through life carrying bitterness and grudges and anger and
 resentment in our hearts, the person who suffers most, the person
 who is affected most by that is not the person that we are angry
 towards, but ourselves. There is an old Chinese saying that the
 person that wants to kill his enemy should really dig two graves
 because, as I say, bitterness and anger and hatred, these things
 are really like cancer. They eat away at us from the inside out.
 And they can end up really destroying our lives and dominating our
 lives. i have met some people that, I am sure you have as well,
 people who are consumed with rage, people who are always on the
 fences, people who are angry because of what has happened to them.
 And, you know, you can practically see it, physically on their
 faces. They look cold and hard and callous. And that is not what
 the Lord wants for us. The Lord came that we might have life and
 have life to the full. He wants us to be happy. He wants us to have
 peace of mind and contentment. He wants us to have freedom and
 peace. And the only way that we can do this is by choosing the path
 to forgiveness. There is no other way. Forgiveness is extremely
 difficult, but it’s not impossible. And I think that we, as
 Christians, we, as followers of Jesus Christ can look to the
 example of other people who have been hurt deeply, but have learned
 to let go and to forgive. We can see from their example that
 revenge is never the way forward and that forgiveness is possible.
 
 In the monastery where I live and work in Belfast, every June we
 have a nine-day novena, a solemn novena in honor of the Mother of
 Perpetual Help. And almost twenty thousand people come to that
 novena every single day. And one aspect is that we invite the
 people to write out their petitions and their prayers, to write out
 the things that they want to say thanks to God for as well. And we
 always read a few of them at every Mass. That novena took place
 about a month ago. One evening, I came across a letter of
 thanksgiving that someone had written. It struck me so deeply that
 I’ve kept it with me ever since. I’d like to read it for you this
 morning. I don’t think it needs any explanation. It needs no
 commentary. It speaks for itself.
 
 The person wrote:
 “Dear Mother of Perpetual Help,
 I want to say a very deep thank you for helping me to do a good
 turn that I thought was impossible. For as long as I can remember,
 I had a very bad father when we were children. All he used to do
 was use his belt and his fists and put my mom and us children out
 in the street. So many times, we would have been out all night,
 were it not for the help of friends. When I was thirteen, he left
 us and went off to live with another woman. But it didn’t stop him
 from coming back and abusing us. I got married and I had children
 of my own, and I didn’t see him for years. I didn’t want to. Then,
 eventually, I heard that he was sick in the hospital, and I
 wouldn’t go to see him for I hated him that much. Then, one day, I
 was going over to the church to do the Stations of the Cross, as I
 was doing them every day for a special request. And I saw my father
 standing against the wall. I hadn’t seen him for years. He looked
 very sick. And I knew he could never make it to where he lived. As
 I walked past him, I said to myself, “You can’t beat us up now. Can
 you?” When I got to the church door, I don’t know what came over me
 but I just couldn’t go inside. So I stood there and began to think.
 There I was asking God to help me and I wouldn’t help my father. So
 I went back down to where he was standing and I said, “Come on.
 I’ll bring you to the bus stop.” And he said, “Thank God. I could
 never have made it on my own.” I brought him to the bus stop but I
 didn’t go with him, for I still couldn’t forget the things that he
 had done to us. A week later, he was back in the hospital and he
 ended up dying there. I was with him when the priest came and gave
 him Holy Communion, so I realized that God had forgiven him for all
 that he had done. That’s a few years ago now and I am a little bit
 older. But everyday I thank Jesus and his holy mother Mary for
 helping me to go back to my father and help him home. I hope that
 this letter will help somebody else to forgive. I know that it’s
 very hard to do, but with the help of God, you can do it.”
 
 It is indeed very hard to do, but with the help of God, we can do
 it. If there is any pain in our hearts this morning, if there are
 any feelings of anger or resentment, if we are carrying any
 feelings of guilt or regret about the past, let’s take the
 opportunity of unburdening ourselves, of handing those things over
 to the Lord, so that we can let go and move on in our lives. And,
 if we think that it’s too difficult, let’s remember that with God’s
 help and with God’s strength we can achieve so much more than we
 could ever manage on our own. Amen.