Our Gospel lesson this morning on this Forgiveness Sunday is about getting on God's wavelength:

In recent weeks we have meditated on men who, upon encountering God, promise to follow, but later. They cling to the past (life with parents) and are driven to secure their material future (an inheritance). They say, "First, let me bury my father" (Lu 9:59). But the Lord's reply is swift and sharp: the one who is called and looks back "is not fit for the Kingdom of God" (Lu 9:62). Does not this herky-jerky life resemble most people today? People cling to the past and fear for the future. But the Kingdom of God is always now here on Earth, and an eternal now beyond the threshold of death.

Think of Eden, that never-dimming moment of many treasures — the earthly perfection of now. Here was perfect contentment from moment to moment to moment: no dwelling on the past, no trepidations for the future. Adam built no storehouses and feared no lean seasons. It was the place on Earth perfectly synchronized to the timezone of Heaven.

This was the purpose of God's sojourn in the Sinai wilderness, a different kind of Eden, alone with His people, providing their every need with manna from Heaven and sweet water from the rock: no more clinging to the past and the fleshpots of Egypt; no anxieties for the future or how they would survive.

This was also the signature trait of the man of Eden, John the Baptist, who ate manna made of wheat and honey, ενκρις (enkris), and dressed in natural attire. "Be done with the past!" he preached. "Confess your former sins and be liberated from your former mistakes!" Here is true freedom. Here is Edenic life.

Yet, one microsecond after the Fall from grace (and in a twinkling), the ever-now of Eden is lost. We see this desolation instantly in the face of diminished Adam. Confronting catastrophe, he quickly devolves into "past-think." He cannot bear the present and shifts blame on to Eve. "The woman!" Adam said. "She did it!" Then his mind darts to a more distant past:

A frantic shuffling through the past in search of a narrative when things go wrong .... is not this the quintessence of the heart of fallen man? We commonly hear, "How could God have let this happen?" Whether it is world hunger, weapons of mass destruction, pandemics, polluted oceans, our broken planet, the blame is shifted on to God. We must own that this impulse to condemn amounts to vengeance. The accusing finger of rage, pointing away from ourselves and directed even to God, is an act of revenge. Ironically, the blame for all these calamities falls squarely on our own shoulders. For they are the outcome of human greed, recklessness, and selfishness.

Dwelling on the past or anxiety about the future is distinctly un-Edenic and, therefore, un-Heavenly. This helps us to understand the epigram with which we began: our heart will be where our treasure is. The Greek word underlying the English word treasure literally means "storehouse" or "barn." It is the Greek θησαυρος (thysauros), from which we derive our word, thesaurus. The idea is, our hearts will always be fixed on whatever we have heaped up. Whatever we seek to hoard, this is the object of our heart's affections. And it is a turning away from the abundance of God's now and all His blessings.

The Son of God teaches us about this now:

In the chapter preceding our Gospel lesson, Jesus has taught,

In recent weeks, we have considered the practical dimensions of Christian life. The Apostles instruct us to avoid the ungodly: not to eat with them nor even to greet them lest we participate in their evil. Sending His Apostles into the world, the Lord Jesus teaches much the same: salute no one, go about your ministry in a workman-like way, and depart when you encounter ungodly company (Lu 10:4ff). Moreover, as the Master reveals the meaning of the Advent of God to His Disciples, He describes a "Kingdom of Heaven" that is like a circle of light upon the Earth. It goes without saying that within this circle we find love and acceptance. That is how the world will know we are His disciples: that we love one another. Forgiving each other within a kingdom defined by love? We scarcely need say it. The more challenging proposition is to love those beyond this circle, in particular, to love a world entrenched in opposition to God, for which, Jesus says, He does not pray (Jn 17:9).

Nonetheless, on this Sunday when forgiveness is uppermost in our minds, which Gospel passage stands out most prominently?

The Sermon on the Mount is known in the Latin tradition as "the Beatitudes." Now, the word beatitude does not occur in the English Bible. It enters the Christian tradition with St. Jerome choosing the Latin beatus to translate the Greek μακαριοσ (makarios) , or happy:

The Beatitudes, in like measure, explode worldly categories and experience. We find in them a superabundance of love beyond human capacity. And this is their point. For the Beatitudes reveal the atmosphere and element, not of Earth, but of Heaven. We may rightly style them "the Proverbs of Heaven" or the "Rule of Life for angels."

At seminary, I was privileged to meet a very humble and wise priest. His personal holiness was palpable, and many sought him out. (I was not surprised to learn that he had been Henri Nouwen's spiritual adviser.) From time to time, he would host get-togethers for seminarians. At one of these, he shared the story of his call. He said that one Sunday while listening to a homily on the Beatitudes, he felt the Lord calling him away from everyday life and into a new world which he thought of as being "Gospel life." He determined then and there to live the Beatitudes. From now on, they would be more than inspiration; they would be his practical rule for living. He would wade into the hurly and burly of life applying these cherish ideals in every situation.

As many people have, I have stood at the intersection where beautiful ideas meet with life's brutality. During the Hermitage's first years in Polynesian culture, historically warrior culture, we found ourselves under attack. Our grove of lemon trees was cut to the ground. Our windows were broken with rotten fruit heaped in our kitchen. Men entered our large, mature Lychee grove one night starting up their chain saws. One afternoon an enraged young man roared up to a filling station where I was fueling our truck. Dancing like a boxer with clenched fists, he screamed, "C'mon! Let's go!" .... with one of the Hermitage Sisters sitting in the cab.

Why were these things happening? They seemed to come from .... nowhere. They were happening, it turned out, because we were European descendants rehabilitating a farm owned by a Japanese-American family (since 1922). It did not matter that the farm had been left to wrack and ruin now being taken over by the jungle. It did not matter that we were tenant farmers working in harmony with that same Japanese family, even beloved by them. It did not matter that we were a non-profit charity with no one receiving compensation for their labors. The only thing that mattered now was "dog-pack think" — violent men exhilarated by wreaking havoc. Passivity only fueled their instinct to dominate. Loving them, as we had been doing, only made things worse. The police told me that only push-back, my push-back, could resolve this. Should I apply the Proverbs of Heaven? Should I live the Rule of Life of angels while elderly religious sisters were exposed to constant violence?

I burned through these same questions when I registered as a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam War. I was asked what I would do if men invaded my family's home one night. Would I protect my grandmother and mother, or would I stand by passively watching them suffer rape and murder? I said, "If that were the standard I must meet, then I am not a Conscientious Objector."

The priest hosting the get-together came to the end of his story. He told us that he had made a discovery. He was unable to live the Beatitudes. It was not possible, not on Earth. He learned that anyone who actually lived these teachings would be destroyed.

I remembered his discovery years later when I became a Franciscan Tertiary adopting Francis of Assisi as my patron and guide. I saw that Francis had set out to live the Beatitudes. He lived them with exactitude, and they would become the Cross on which he would perish. He died at a young age with the wounds of Christ, the Stigmata, traced upon his body, which he had used up in his uncompromising faithfulness.

A Sister of the Hermitage many years ago had been serving in a fourth-world country at a time when its government was crumbling. Pillaging and looting was rife all around her. The clinic which she ran was under siege. Foreign troops offered to evacuate her to their boat awaiting offshore. "I cannot leave," she told them. "I cannot go where the poor cannot go." So she walked back inside the clinic, sat down at her ham radio (years before the Internet), and told headquarters in the U.S. where she had hidden the ministry's funds and where they would find her body. She was determined to live Gospel life to the end. (This story was related to me by the man who received her ham radio transmission.)

All of these stories point, of course, to the Master Story. The Lord Jesus, Who preached that most Heavenly sermon ever heard .... this is His Story. The Beatitudes are the practice of Heaven on Earth. They are the quality of Heavenly life itself. By their nature, they can never square with the world — a world that cannot bear to hear them, a world who, receiving the actual Person of God, tore Him apart like a frenzied dog pack — abandoned Him, mocked Him, spitted on Him, and nailed Him to a Cross.

And we must never forget His words to all who would follow Him:

The past is past. The dead have buried their dead. The future is an illusion, exploded by Heaven's infinite and eternal reaches. Now is all that matters. Now is where we let go of the control we never had in the first place. Now is where trust begins. Now is where love is finally free. To be sure, God will reveal His Heavenly will to every heart who loves Him.

Show the world this trust and love and faith and, yes, forgiveness. For the world, beneath its violence and its self-inflicted pain, aches to be loved. And the one who has prepared the loving cup for his neighbor, that one will be followed by God, Who longs to fill us with His goodness and His forgiveness. Take hold of this cup, for it is the nectar of Heaven.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.