Picking at scabs

2 Corinthians 3:1-9,18

           Can you recall a time when you had a scab? Not necessarily a skinned knee like the times of our youth but some nick or such that caused a small scab to form. On several occasions in my life I have found some need, as if an itch, to scratch the scab to the point I wind up bleeding again. You look down and there's a small trail of bleed running down your arm or leg. I suppose it is embarrassing. We are picking scabs and we are not allowing things to heal.

          Oddly enough, this is what I came to mind with this passage. I think of people whom I have known, good faithful men and women who I have shared  deep spiritual blessings with. I think of  the times of sorrow shared, deep service shared, joys experienced and all the things that seals relationships and allows you to see what a person is truly made of.  It bothers me so that some of these people that I have felt needed no recommendations, that I felt I knew and loved deeply, abandoned me in my time of trial. And again, this is embarrassing to me because the hurt caused by seemingly good people of faith is something I allow to still bother me like a scab I have picked and let bleed all over again.

           There is probably no closer a time outside of marriage and perhaps more than family when you share spiritual formation and service with your fellow seminarians. You see the good the bad and you love and support them. You serve under trying times, study and witness to each other. You minister to each other when tragedy strikes. You are always there for them.

         When I realized I was gay, came out and asked for a leave of absence from my ministry, I found that almost universally, these good people abandoned me.  It's as if I would indeed now need a recommendation of the highest order to be readmitted to the circle of Catholic exclusivity and honor. No one called, no one asked, no one sent a card or text. My phone number hasn't changed.  I was anathema in one fell swoop. 

         I do not mention this as an embarrassment to them for not living the faithful loving lives that they have been called to or claim is theirs. That may be true. I am however embarrassed at myself for allowing this passage to remind me of an old scab and what do I do? I pick the scab and let it bleed.

         The message here is not to do this. We will be hurt by others' poor choices and mistakes our whole lives. We cannot expect others to act in a perfect manner when we ourselves are not capable of as much. Can we forgive and forget? That is what is needed. Picking scabs and revisiting hurt stops you from moving forward and pursuing your own journey to wholeness.

        It's not so much that we should ever really shake the dust off our shoes and simply forget people ever existed in our lives. I am not saying that. It seems to me that is what some people have done to me. What we are called to do is forgive and appreciate that love that really did exist and was genuine and expressive of the best of our life and recognize it as formative and part of our journey. Dwell on the love and the journey, never the hurt. Picking scabs is no good for anyone and it leaves you scarred. 

          

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Now if the ministry of death, chiselled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.