The Book of Sirach, in the Hebrew Bible, was written about 2,300 years ago, but its admonitions are far from old-fashioned:
“Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”
Does that sound familiar?
So much of what we hear in our world is toxic with anger. We live in a culture of outrage, of being quick to judge — and to judge harshly.
Quick to anger, fast to judge
And, if I’m honest, it’s not just the world and the people around me who are wrathful.
I confess that I am quick to anger, fast to judge. It is easy for me to get mad at some driver on Devon or at some politician on TV with whom I disagree.
Disagreement is fine, but not demonization. That’s when I write off the other person as deeply bad, deeply evil, as a kind of demon.
There are bad actions, evil actions. But the people who do these bad things are still human beings, still my brothers and sisters.
Just as I am their brother, even though I am a sinner. We are all sinners as Pope Francis often reminded us.
“How often must I forgive?”
“How often must I forgive? As many as seven times?”
That’s what Jesus is asked in Matthew’s gospel. He responds:
“I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”
Essentially, “seventy-seven times” is another way of saying “always.”
Love no matter what
Christianity is countercultural, so countercultural that, as Sirach writes, we’re called to
“hate not [our] neighbor, remember the Most High’s covenant, and overlook faults.”
In other words, we’re called to love our neighbor no matter what.
Patrick T. Reardon
9.14.26
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.