In the March Just Gospel Reflection, Sister Kathleen Murphy invites us to pray with Pope Francis for broken families that they might discover the cure of their wounds through forgiveness, rediscovering each other’s gifts even in their differences. St. Francis of Assisi’s family is an example of relationships needing healing. St. Francis, pray for us. (Photo: St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Frisco, Texas)
In Psalm 147:3 the psalmist speaks in tones of hope and healing saying: God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds og This promise speaks to Pope Francis’ intention for March which reads: Let us pray that broken families might discover the cure for their wounds through forgiveness, rediscovering each other’s gifts even in their differences.
St. Paul joins the psalmist in speaking of hope as he writes in Romans 5:5: Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. Far from being a simple wish for the future with no guarantee that it will come about, Christian hope is the presence of divine love in person, the Holy Spirit, a current of life that carries us even through times of difficulty and pain.
Our special remembrance of broken families is such a need in our world today. It can lead us to consider the whole area of brokenness evident not just in families but in whole societies as well as in individual hearts and lives. The Japanese culture looks at such fragmentation of lives in an art called kintsugi wherein the artist repairs broken pottery with gold, rendering a new piece that is more exquisite than it was before the break. Jay Wolf, in his book Suffer Strong writes:
“Instead of throwing away the broken beloved pottery, we’ll fix it in a way that doesn’t pretend it hasn’t been broken but honors the breaking—and more so, the surviving—by highlighting those repaired seams with gold lacquer. Now the object is functional once again and dignified, not discarded. It’s stronger and even more valuable because of its reinforced, golden scars.”
The process is layered and time-consuming, which along with mending it with gold, all contribute to its value. And surprisingly, it becomes more resilient after it has been mended by kintsugi, even stronger than it was before. We can think of God as being the ultimate kintsugi master who skillfully and tenderly puts the broken pieces of our lives and the lives of families back together. So often we see that God’s healing handiwork leaves people and situations stronger and more beautiful because of the suffering endured.
We also know that such healing and mending of brokenness requires forgiveness on deep and lasting levels. St. Francis includes in the Canticle the phrase: Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love, and bear infirmity and tribulation. Rev. David Hacker writes in his Reflections on St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures:
“We stand at a threshold. We are always standing at a threshold. A gateway, just as St. Francis stood at the gate of Assisi, leaving behind his earthly father’s world to embrace a new vision of the community of creation. At this threshold we catch a glimpse of the world, not as an endless battle of opposites pitted against each other. Instead, we see an eternal dance in which all the diversity of creation is united. Creation does go round and round and yet there is somewhere, deep down at the core, at the center, a point, a singularity around which everything revolves. A still point of the turning world to which we are called to return.”
We can pray that this becomes the stance of family members facing broken relationships. May they stand at that threshold where they begin to see their family life as that eternal dance in which all diversity and all differences can become a united, a reunited whole. For this we pray!
Reflections on Saint Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures Episcopal Networks Collaborative/Rev. David Hacker, p.17.
