The Good News of Reconciliation
If you would have told me that I would be a high school teacher and a priest when I was a student at Elder High School, I would have said, “You’re crazy!” I wanted to be a broadcast journalist. Even though I’m not delivering the evening news as an anchor, I am delivering the Good News as a Precious Blood priest!
In addition to my service as executive director of Mission Advancement for the United States Province, I also serve full-time as chaplain and theology teacher at Archbishop McNicholas High School, the first co-ed Catholic high school in my hometown, Cincinnati.
The school is uncharacteristic: 86% of our students identify as Catholic. The statistical average of Catholic students in Catholic high schools in the United States is around 60%. Not all our students are practicing, of course, but many are culturally Catholic. And that’s helpful for advancing our Catholic culture.
In addition, I teach a required course to juniors, “Liturgy and Sacraments,” each semester. I love teaching. I’m convinced that I learn more from my students about life, love, and God than they learn from me. And junior year is a good year — they have just enough seriousness and mischief to keep things interesting!
Toward the end of the semester, we spend extra time on the Sacraments of Healing: Anointing of the Sick and Reconciliation. It is the latter that many students have routinely noted as the most meaningful. It’s not exactly because I’m teaching it, but the transformative impact of Precious Blood spirituality that we study alongside the Sacrament of Reconciliation is itself transformational.
As you might expect, we cover the historical and theological nuts and bolts of Reconciliation, and they will ask predictable questions like, “What’s the worst sin you’ve heard at school?” (You can tell by their body language that they want to ask but don’t, “Who confessed it?”) They ask, “Have you ever heard ‘murder’?” One student humorously asked if I ever committed it. Without missing a beat and giving a furtive wink, I said, “It’s under consideration.”
One reason their adventure into Reconciliation has been so rich is because of the spirituality of the Precious Blood. Often new to them, I’ve come to expect comments like, “I’ve been Catholic for 17 years. This is stuff is great — why I am hearing it for the first time?” Exactly. This is Good News!
What initially grips their minds and rouses their hearts is a copy of two talks I give them from Fr. Robert Schreiter, PhD, C.PP.S. (1947–2021). I ask them to carefully read the text of his talks, analyze them, and be prepared for a robust month-long discussion that will touch into the deepest parts of their lives, if they let it. No other topic nor discussion produces such insightful questions, serious conversations, and deeply moving personal reflections. Nothing.
As we begin the material, I ask them to get in touch with a time when they were hurt or hurt someone else, and to spend time with that experience. I then ask, “What would make it better?” They often say, “forgiveness” and “reconciliation.” I ask, “What does that mean for you?” Silence. “What do you hope for if you forgive that person? If they forgive you?” Silence. “When you forgave that person, what was it like?” Silence. Few have been asked those questions. Many are frustrated that they don’t have an adequate response.
We talk a lot about forgiveness and reconciliation within Catholic Christianity but seldom know what we’re talking about with any measured clarity. I am not pointing fingers, but I am inviting dialogue. Just like Schreiter. He took seriously the healing and reconciliation ministry of Jesus and in the Gospels, and through a smart cross-disciplinary process, invites the curious to consider the ministry of reconciliation and the praxis of forgiveness for our everyday lives.
To the question, “What do you hope to gain from Christian reconciliation and forgiveness?”, he responds, “We preserve the painful memory, but we’re no longer held hostage to it.” And my students light up: “That’s what I want! I don’t want to walk into a room, see ‘her’ and feel paralyzed!” Or, “That’s what happened to me! The scar from my father will always be with me, but thankfully the pain left long ago! I’m a new person now!”
Schreiter notes that, “forgive and forget” is popular advice for dealing with pain, but it is patently unrealistic. How does one forget something significant? If the wrong done to us was significant, and we are told to “forget it,” that seemingly well-intentioned message could trivialize the pain or even re-victimize the person. We do not forget the wrongdoing done to us. But we can remember in a different way, when we no longer give that person power over us. It takes time. Hard work. And lots of prayer.
A student last year wrote, “Precious Blood spirituality has helped me to forgive a grade school bully. I still have the scars from his abuse years ago, but I’m no longer a slave to him and the pain he caused. I’m finally free inside, thanks to God, my friends, a lot of hard work, and this reading material.” And the mission continues.
Precious Blood spirituality is certainly multi-splendored, and Schreiter’s work in forgiveness and reconciliation is one brilliant radiation of it. It has the potential to penetrate deep parts of ourselves, our wounds, that often need liberation that we cannot give ourselves, nor should we, ultimately. Christ asks us to be patient, to trust ever more that God is working this out in time, and that is fundamentally the ground of Christian hope.
During this Jubilee Year of Hope in the Catholic Church, we lift our own chalice of hope and put into it our pain and suffering. As the Holy Spirit transforms the wine into the Precious Blood of Christ at the Eucharist, that same Spirit will transform our hurt into healing so it may become “sacramental,” a source of grace and wellspring of wisdom for ourselves, others, and all creation.
Fr. Kevin Scalf, C.PP.S.