\u201cIt is difficult to capture what this anniversary means to us as Americans, as New Yorkers, as Catholic Christians.\u00a0 The things we feel are almost beyond words.\u00a0 We are still, in many ways, groping in the dark, struggling to find a way to deal with what happened, and how much our lives and our world have changed.\u00a0 Yet, this day, as we come before the altar of God with our prayers and petitions, our grief and our anger, we hear these words from the ancient prophet:<\/p>\n
\u201cForgive your neighbor\u2019s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Think of the commandments, hate not your neighbor; remember the Most High\u2019s covenant, and overlook faults.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In the gospel, Jesus says it again:\u00a0 \u201cForgive your brother,\u201d he says, \u201cfrom your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n But how?\u00a0 I wish I knew.\u00a0 I wish there were a mystical way to click on a forgiveness switch in the human heart.\u00a0 I wish I knew how to love all my enemies and pray for all my persecutors and \u201cforgive my neighbor\u2019s injustice\u201d \u2013 even this most heinous injustice of all.<\/p>\n I think perhaps that forgiveness \u2013 like conversion \u2013 is a journey.\u00a0 The human heart isn\u2019t necessarily converted over night.\u00a0 We don\u2019t all have that electrifying moment on the road to Damascus.\u00a0 For many of us, it grows out of what Flannery O\u2019Connor called \u201ca habit of being.\u201d\u00a0 It happens over a lifetime.<\/p>\n Conversion is a daily choice.\u00a0 So, is love.<\/p>\n And so, I believe, is forgiveness.<\/p>\n Like all of the challenges of our faith, it is something we need to pray for \u2013 to pray to able to do what we are called to do.<\/p>\n To love our neighbor.<\/p>\n To love our enemies.<\/p>\n To forgive our neighbor\u2019s injustice.<\/p>\n C.S. Lewis put it beautifully.\u00a0 \u201cTo be a Christian,\u201d he wrote, \u201cis to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven it in us.\u201d<\/p>\n A couple weeks ago, we heard Christ tells his disciples: \u201cTake up your cross and follow me.\u201d<\/p>\n