Pope Francis Smiles As He Dishes Out Some Tough Love To Victims Of Divorce

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 12:43 pm by Lisa Duffy

Pope Francis Smiles As He Dishes Out Some Tough Love To Victims Of Divorce 2016-07-27T12:43:38-04:00 Lisa Duffy

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Got enemies? Pope Francis has some tough advice for you, if you do. Can you take it? In this poignant article that may be hard to swallow for some, contributor Amanda Rose illustrates the beauty and the necessity of forgiving those who have deeply wounded us.

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As a divorced Catholic, and also as a breathing human being, you probably have a list of people who’ve hurt you: your former spouse, an “other” woman/man who broke up your marriage, counselors who couldn’t fix things (but took your money), lawyers you had to hire to keep things fair, a judge who ruled unjustly, friends who condemned you either for leaving or for staying as long as you did, priests who spoke without mercy and sometimes without proper information, the marriage tribunal who communicated coldly, and on and on goes the list. I don’t know that any of us – divorced or not – ever run out of people that need our forgiveness.

Which is why this Jubilee of Mercy is such a prime opportunity to work on forgiving those who have hurt us so deeply, and we all know that’s not as easy as it sounds. It sure would be less challenging to think of the Jubilee of Mercy as something just the institutional Church is doing. We might imagine it as an academic celebration of a boring encyclical written by an out-of-touch old man. We could ignore the words that surely couldn’t apply to us, drop a check in the mail as our bit to help the suffering, and finally pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. That would certainly let us off the hook easily, wouldn’t it?

But Pope Francis has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged each one of us to show mercy to our offenders and forgive them. In his General Audience December 9th 2015, Pope Francis preached, “This Jubilee, in other words, is a privileged moment for the Church to learn to choose only ‘what pleases God most.’ “ Our Holy Father went on to explain that what pleases God most is forgiveness and mercy. Forgiveness and mercy can feel uncomfortable to us, but God wants us to be “a flame of God’s mercy in the world” as we extend our own forgiveness to others. This is what pleases God most.

Pope Francis may always be wearing a smile, but his words to us are tough love! He said that nothing is more important this year than “what pleases God most.” Yikes! He’s talking about doing the very thing so many people have such a difficult time with – forgiving!

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Jubilee Year of Mercy

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