The Glue that Binds

In today's Gospel Jesus counsels forgiving not seven times but seventy. Forgiveness has been called the core of the Christian faith (C.S.Lewis). The Christian answer to conflict and violence is forgiveness, not tit for tat. To defeat your enemy, Lincoln said, make him your friend.

Forgiveness is not an easy yoke to shoulder, but often the hardest thing we can undertake. Forgiving may take years of effort. But it is what Christ demands and offers by way of invitation to liberation and new life. My commentary on today's reading (Living In Christ) notes that persons meeting who hold a grudge against one another stiffen, like corpses. Life flows again when we can forgive.

It is Christ's spirit of love that enables us to forgive. That was brought home to me today when I read that Plato in the Timaeus (31b-c) pointed out that "Two things cannot properly be put together without a third; there has to be some bond between the two to draw them together. The most beautiful bond is the one that produces the greatest union of itself and of the things it brings together . . ." (quoted in D.C. Schindler, "Ever Ancient, Ever New" in Communio, Spring-Summer 2012, at p. 47).

The point the author makes is that Christ is the glue, the bonding agent that draws two together in friendship. (Of course, that is the basic principle of the theology of Christian marriage. It applies, it seems, to all true friendships.)

Schindler goes on to say, "Compare to the opening line of Aelred of Rivaulx's work on friendship: 'You and I are here, and I hope that Christ is between us as a third"; On Spiritual Friendship, trans. Laurence C. Braceland (Trappist, K.Y.: Cistercian Publications, 2010),55."

I think of forgiveness as a core part of the Christian "glue" (love) that holds friends together. It is a crucial grace among the many graces of love, emanating from Christ, who is Love personified, drawing two into His loving embrace, and making friends of them.