Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
“His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in
anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.” (Matthew 18:32-35, NABRE)
Over and over again, Jesus tells us in parables and sermons that His Father loves us exceedingly and will forgive anything, as long as we come to Him with a contrite heart. Sometimes that’s hard; we can’t even forgive ourselves for our sins, so how can we expect the Lord to do so? And yet, He can and does. He longs to, in fact.
And if we find it so difficult to believe we can be forgiven, perhaps it’s not surprising that offering that forgiveness to others can be challenging.
Back on February 28, 1981, in my hometown, a newborn was found in a ditch. He’d died of exposure. The placenta was still attached. It was all anyone could talk about for days. A fellow reporter anonymously arranged for a burial and funeral, which I and about fifty other people attended. We all wondered if the circumstances of Baby Andrew’s life and death would ever be known.
Thanks to DNA databases, those circumstances came to light a few weeks ago. The mother, Theresa Bentaas, was nineteen at the time, just five years younger than me. She says she was young, single, and stupid, telling no one about the pregnancy or birth, not even the baby’s father, whom she later married. Now facing murder charges, she was arrested on what would have been Baby Andrew’s thirty-eighth birthday, which struck me as something less than compassionate.
A lot of hard things have been said about Baby Andrew’s mother, especially in the past month since her identity was revealed. I don’t know Theresa Bentaas. I hope I would have made a different choice if I had been in her situation; I haven’t been there. But as a Christian, I have to believe she can receive the Lord’s forgiveness if she seeks it. I hope she does. As for me, I’m praying for her and for the little baby who never did a thing that required forgiveness in his few hours of life, and offering Masses for them both.
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