Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
In the weeks following our Lord’s glorious Resurrection on Easter Sunday, it starts to become clear that something new is possible: forgiveness. The Apostles had witnessed the humiliating death of their God, the man they followed, and yet few stuck around to see things through, and all of them fell short in promises they made to Him whom they called Lord. By Divine Mercy Sunday, we find them fearfully locked away in the upper room. Yet the Resurrected Jesus, when He first appears, does not condemn them. Instead, He greets them with a simple, transformative blessing: “Peace be with you” (John 20:19).
At a time when they least deserve it, Christ offers His disciples the peace of His forgiveness. Without it, the Apostles would have every reason to remain locked in that room, afraid and ashamed until death. But now, a new way of living has become possible, and with it a new law: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:23).
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
But there were many then, and there are many today, scandalized by the mere possibility of that forgiveness. Some, like French existentialist Albert Camus, encourage man to simply make his peace with the absurdity of human existence—an existence where man is forced to endure suffering without purpose or redemption. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” he wrote.
Others react with anger and spite, living in rebellion. Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, confronted with the suffering of innocent children, understandably lashes out:
Is there in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive? I don’t want harmony, for love of mankind I don’t want it. I want to remain with unrequited suffering. I’d rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong… It’s not that I don’t accept God, Aloysha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket.
These men have an acute sense of the suffering of the world, a moral sensitivity we might even consider admirable. But they close the door to forgiveness, for others, and most importantly, for themselves.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Camus and Ivan’s lamentations place the blame outward, whether on God, others, or apparent absurdity of the world. Lost is the personal reality of sin, evil, and suffering. Sin is not a theological idea, but a lived reality we all participate in. Without starting from a place of recognizing our own evil, we resign ourselves like Sisyphus to the meaningless rolling of the boulder up a mountain of our own making.
Camus, Ivan, and their modern successors reject the possibility of forgiveness when they critique the nature of reality without first acknowledging their own sin. Their omission not only weakens their critique but perpetuates the evil and suffering they ostensibly lament by closing the door to the only thing that can bring real peace: the grace and forgiveness of God which makes another way of living possible. Sisyphus does not need to trick himself into being happy, lash out at the divine, tremble in fear, or bitterly persist in rebellion against reality. He simply needs to ask forgiveness for himself.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
But asking for that forgiveness is hard, even for the Christian. “Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee,” St. Augustine famously wrote in his Confessions. Pain is continence—knowing good as you persist in evil. Ignorance ought to be considered its own punishment, but the psychic torment of knowing the truth and still falling short is a greater pain. “Every disordered soul is its own punishment,” wrote that most penitential father of the Church.
The Christian has started to accept the connection between suffering and his need for forgiveness. But to offer up or endure external suffering, the kind called out by Camus and Ivan, is one thing. To find meaning in the suffering he has learned he inflicts on himself is quite another. Like some sort of perpetual motion machine, can suffering even be meritorious if it is the product of one’s own fault?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Similarly, the sinner may be struck with fear in the face of a promise that all can be made right in him. He may tell himself he is afraid because he worries restoration is not possible or such a transformation is an insult to his reason and experience. Or he may fear because he knows what such a promise will mean—pain, self-denial, sacrifice, humiliation, etc. He knows to be with God in Heaven is to be made perfect, so rather than surrender himself to the being made, he rationalizes his rejection with despair. He may even entertain himself with the idea that his despair is a sign of his penitence, of his moral sophistication and sensitivity.
While it is beyond this author’s ability to probe the depths of the soul, it seems worth noting that accepting that “the unexamined life is not worth living” is not enough, lest one merely become a more theologically sophisticated Camus or Ivan. The painful observation of one’s own pathologies and evil must lead one to seek out forgiveness. No amount of introspection will suffice; we must not “refuse to be treated out of wickedness” like Dostoevsky’s underground man. We must act. We must confess. We must seek the peace of Christ’s forgiveness continually—not as an abstract spiritualism but in a frequent encounter with him in the sacrament.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
In the parable of the prodigal son, after the lost sheep squanders his father’s money, a severe famine hits, leaving him in destitution. Many of us would be tempted to lash out against the famine and the God that would allow nature to, seemingly without reason, strike the earth. Others of us would resign in despair to living among the swine, reasoning we could never once again be restored as our father’s son. Yet, dying from hunger, the lost son takes the concrete decision to respond to suffering by returning home, in the hope of his father’s peace and forgiveness. Let us forever seek to do the same and let us forever be prepared to welcome our neighbor in kind.
‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found’(Luke 15:21-24).
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
