Revenge, Tragedy, and Forgiveness

I finished today a short novel I devoured during my sick days this week.  The Gap of Time, a retelling of The Winter's Tale, which is probably my real favorite Shakespeare play.  Even though I love Twelfth Night.

The author puts forward a thesis I wanted to explore in this blog, even though I've made a commitment to use the daily Mass readings.  But, of course, I found my answer or at least my prompt in the readings today.  I really need to trust in the Lord sometimes.  If nothing else, I've learned that this week.  When I have been cradled in the palm of His hand and feeling like I am just along for the ride.

Jeanette Winterstone posits that there are only 3 real endings: revenge, tragedy, and forgiveness.

There's a kind of balance to it.  Tragedy is where everything starts out precious and glorious but delicate and ends in ashes and ruin.  Forgiveness is when thing are terrible and broken but then through love and chance everything is better and whole again or at least made new.

Revenge then is something terrible happening and something terrible happening in return.  Both sides of the coin are bad.

Can we have a story that is good straight way through?  Can we have a life, if not a story?  If stories are conflict, and our stories are how we expect the world to be, then what does that say of our lives?

In answer to this query from a novelist, the Catholic Church poses a riddle of juxtaposition.  It's a trio contained a pair of contradictions.

Seriously, read it.

First, Moses tells us that we have two choices for our path in life.  Life and Death, Good and Bad, Sin and Righteousness, God's favor or God's scorn.  We choose by our actions.

And at first glance, the psalm gives us a glimpse of what that life would look like if we made the appropriate choice.  God is with us.  Our way is easy, our burden so light, our enemies flee like chaff before us.

But the gospel promise reminds us what followed Moses's promise and directly contradicts the psalm.  The Way of Life was to start a war to uproot the people settled in the Holy Land.  The Good Way, the Easier, Light Yoke involved years of bloodshed and difficulty.

And Jesus tells us that He will suffer persecution and that anyone who would follow Him must take up His cross in order to follow.  We don't want to be the easy street that leads to tragedy.  So we must take the messy road that leads to the work of forgiveness.  It's easy compared to the Revenge Route, which is dark the whole way, and it has a better ending than what might be tempting about the bright path that will descend into tragedy.

But it takes real faith to walk that way.  To look at the light yoke we are promised by Moses and the psalm as we live the reality of the cross Jesus asks us to take on our backs, as we fight the battles Joshua leads us into.  As we do the awkward, painful, messy work of redemption and forgiveness.

It's so much harder and more awkward and weirder and uncomfortable to forgive.  To keep instead of cut.  To open instead of shut.

But of the endings we have for choice, it is the best path.  We walk by faith and not by sight.  One of the three roads looks like the best when you set out.  The bright, wide pathway.  It takes faith to follow instead the narrow road.