The Work of Mercy: Bear Wrongs Patiently, Part 2

That’s why bearing wrongs patiently is hard. The command to bear wrongs patiently is, quite simply, the command to die, to kill your old self and live to God. It’s contrary to every impulse of our fallen human nature, and it both frightens and angers us. It’s like being a sheep before his shearers or a lamb led to the slaughter, opening not your mouth. It’s like being asked to watch your dearly beloved son go through a kangaroo court and be condemned by jaded and cynical bureaucrats who think nothing of putting him to death in the most horrible and humiliating way possible if only they can cling to their power. It’s like being asked to imitate Mary the Mother of Sorrows and her Son Jesus, who bore our wrongs patiently all the way to his death, even death on a cross.

It is there, on Golgotha alone, that we find the grace from God necessary to bear wrongs patiently. Only there do we discover with clarity that God is not laughing at his dearly beloved Son’s misfortunes, nor at ours. Only there do the sins of scheming men meet their decisive defeat. Only there do the powers of hell find all evils inverted and turned to the glory of God. Only there do we find God himself enduring all the suffering, abandonment, and misfortunes of Job as well as all the spite of men and devils—including our own rage at him for any of the slanders we lay upon him in our rage at the evils of the world. And only there can we see the real source of power for all those saints and martyrs who have borne wrongs patiently and, with and in Christ, have seen the fruit of the travail of his soul and been satisfied.

Bearing wrongs patiently is a work of mercy that is possible, in a word, only with the help of Christ crucified. Nobody has ever done it without the grace supplied by his Holy Spirit. That includes non- Christians, because the Light who lightens every person doesn’t care about receiving the credit. Many human beings who have been ignorant or even hostile to what they considered his gospel have borne wrongs patiently with the secret help of his Spirit extended to all men of goodwill. For those of us who do know Christ, we have a precious reservoir of grace and power we can draw on—and the knowledge of how badly we need it.

So how do we access that grace? Well, here the old advice is best, in my limited experience: Pray as if everything depends on God and act as if everything depends on you. Or as Paul puts it, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13). If you are having trouble bearing wrongs patiently, then do what you can to draw on the grace of God where it can be found, especially in the sacraments. In particular, Catholics should ask for the gifts of confirmation (which is all about giving you as a disciple of Jesus the power to get up and do what needs to be done). We should also take our angry resistance to grace and bring it to the sacrament of reconciliation. And of course, the wrongs we bear we should take to the Eucharist, where we can pray for those who wrong us and ask that the grace of the Eucharist be poured out on them and those we love.

Another invaluable gift the gospel gives us is a sense of perspective. Our species has a genius for turning trivialities into world-historical struggles we kill and die for—and we Christians are not exempt. A friend who used to amuse himself by reading sundry Christian websites devoted to vicious quarrels over minutiae never forgot the time some reader asked a site owner if the book of Daniel might date from the second century BC. The site owner shot back, “THAT IS A LIE FROM THE PIT OF HELL!!!”To those of us outside the bubble of obsession, the date of the book of Daniel doesn’t seem that crucial. But to the enthusiast it was something worth sacrificing all his love, joy, and peace on the altar of volcanic rage.

That doesn’t happen just on the Internet, of course. Anybody who has lived in community—whether at home, or in religious life, or in some sort of private organization—can appreciate the witticism of Henry Kissinger, that the reason academic quarrels are so bitter is because the stakes are so low.

Jesus himself ups the ante enormously in his demand that we bear wrongs patiently—and then reminds us that the ante is peanuts compared to the wrongs he himself bears. When Peter takes his idea of mercy to the utmost limit and proposes forgiving sins a whopping seven times, Jesus’ reply is famous:

Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the reckoning, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents; and as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him the lord of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But that same servant, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and besought him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison till he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:22–35).

This gives us some perspective. When it’s my soul on the line, I like to remind myself that Jesus bore the sins of Hans Frank, Nazi Gauleiter of Poland, to the cross, so I am pretty small beer in comparison. But when Jesus addresses the question, I am the servant who owed the king millions and millions of dollars, while the guy I am ready to choke to death owes fifty cents.

That’s a good place to start: small. Before seeing the guy who took your parking place as the living embodiment of the same kind of evil that overran Europe in 1940, try getting some perspective by saying, “It’s just a parking spot. There are plenty more in this town.”

St. Thérèse can be very helpful in this regard, because she too had to struggle with bearing extremely small wrongs patiently. Unlike the stonings, horse-whippings, and shipwrecks that characterized the hardships of St. Paul, Thérèse’s sufferings ran more toward a sweat of exasperation when the sister next to her rattled her rosary beads during evening prayer. As a general rule, such small stuff is the norm for most of us—and therefore the best place to practice the bearing of wrongs patiently. It’s like prepping to run a race. You don’t just get up one morning and run a marathon. You start by running short distances and then build up your strength.

Just as the sin of unforgiveness is its own punishment, so the virtue of bearing wrongs patiently is its own reward. It (obviously) doesn’t prevent evils from befalling you. But it does transform suffering from meaningless garbage (or worse still, seeming evidence that God has it in for you) into the purgatorial pain unto life described in Hebrews:

In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons?––“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:4–13)

In the end, the command to bear wrongs patiently is the command to be like Christ. How telling it is that the sacred writer introduced the subject of suffering by noting that in our struggle with sin we have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. That’s a deeply Christian observation. Because, in fact, every single disciple of Christ is going to shed his blood for Jesus sooner or later. Not everybody will be physically put to death by sword, bullet, or bomb. Some of us will die in our beds. But all of us will undergo death to self for Christ’s sake sooner or later. All of us will take up our cross and follow him—or not. If not, then we will die anyway—and experience the second death if we do not repent before our death.

The Greeks said that the love of wisdom is the practice of death. Wisdom enabled Socrates to face his death. It sustained the patriarchs and prophets through their trials. Bearing wrongs patiently is one of the principal pursuits of the wise man, for wisdom means dying and rising with Christ, who is the wisdom and power of God. It was fully displayed in him as he faced the wrongs heaped on him by enemies, friends, and traitors. And it has sustained the martyrs great and small down through time. It is never too soon or too late to try to live it out. Even if you are as miserable at it as I am, we have the great and consoling truth that whatever step we take toward doing it, no matter how feeble, God will honor with grace to do better next time. For as George MacDonald said, he is easy to please but hard to satisfy.

(For more information, see my book THE WORK OF MERCY: BEING THE HANDS AND HEART OF CHRIST (available here, signed by me, or in Kindle format here, or as an audiobook here).