A Few thoughts on healing and reconciliation in general.
What obscures the process of healing and reconciliation is often a bad spirit. St. Paul, as mentioned in a recent post, helps us understand how the Law by itself actually leads to more sin. Now, if we purely understand this perversion through the sola-lex in its historical/material manifestation found in the bible, then we become blind to its contemporary manifestations and in fact judge this sin not by the Spirit but in the flesh. So, while in the New Testament it speaks about law in regard to the Jewish customs and Mosaic manifestation, it may have evolved into something materially different today, but of the same false-spirit. For instance, being “kind” or being “merciful” would seem to be a law of the Christian.
But if we only have a material and not spiritual understanding of this reality, our sinful dispositions will exploit the normative external manifestations of mercy and kindness, turning them into a type of self-serving endeavor. Think of it like this – for those in the flesh, and not of the Spirit, one judges their interior disposition not through the light of truth and self-knowledge, but by the perceptions and judgments of others. So what we do externally becomes a show, and yet while we can understand this intellectually, it remains all the more possible that we are so swept up and recollected in the perceptions of our actions rather than the motive/spirit of them.
What if a person apologizes to just avoid conflict? What if a person seeks to speak to the apparent/real truth in order to retain conformity and validation? All of this is within the same vein of St. Paul’s teaching about the law being informative, but without the Spirit being another dangerous opportunity to sin.
If we are to apologize let it be because we are genuinely aware of the offence we have done, and out of a desire to heal the other, we validate the wound inflicted upon them by acknowledging that “it was wrong and I shouldn’t have done that.” If we sweep that under the rug, there will be no healing, no closure, and we are basically telling them to get over-it. This is the type of seeking of reconciliation that is merely focused on perhaps Public-Relations (public-opinion), or avoiding further repercussions. It is in the flesh, and blind to the healing power of humility.
Friends, let us always ask the Holy Spirit to deepen our awareness of our sinful motives, so that like St. Paul we can move from a disposition of exploiting the law for honor, power, pleasure or wealth, thus desecrating the Law, to becoming an incarnation of the law in Spirit and Truth.
c.f. Romans 7
“To work this effect in man sin finds opportunity in the law….It should be noted that he does not say that the law gave the opportunity for sin, but that sin itself found opportunity by reason of the law….and it is for the same reason it is called a law of death, not because the law begets death, but because sin begets death finding occasion in the law” (Aquinas, Commentary on Romans 7).
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