Fr Henry Charles

In an article I read recently by Hispanic theologian, Roberto S Goizueta, I came across an account of the tragedy that befell a five-year-old African American child in inner-city Boston during the latter part of last year.

Kai Leigh Harriot was playing in the porch of her home one day when she was struck by a stray bullet from a drive-by. The bullet severed her spine and left her paralysed.

The Boston Globe describedthe trial scene three years later of Anthony Warren, the man charged with the shooting. When the judge asked Kai Leigh to tell the court what happened to her, the child’s voice broke as soon as she mentioned the word “porch”.

After her mother had comforted her, she looked up from her blue wheel chair and confronted Warren. “What you done to me was wrong,” she said. “But I still forgive you…”

In wrenching victim-impact statements Kai and four members of her family told the judge that the shooting had changed their lives forever, but it had also showed them the value of forgiveness. “We’re not victims here,” her mother said, “we’re victors.”

Warren, who till that point had insisted on his innocence, approached the family and apologised. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you and your family,” he said. “I was known on the street for all the wrong reasons. I want to be known for the right reasons.”

Kai’s mother shook his handcuffed right hand and embraced him. Asked later by a reporter why she forgave a man who shot her, the little girl shyly replied: “I wanted him to tell the world the truth.”

One reads sometimes of extraordinary examples of forgiveness like this. Among society’s and the world’s victims, that is, among those in whom one expects to find anger and resentment, what one discovers at times instead is an astonishing generosity and forgiveness.

Like all prophets they confront our littleness with a love that challenges and exposes, because it refuses to be bound by the narrow limits and concessions we tend to remain within.

In the narratives of Jesus after the resurrection, the Gospels had already laid out such a paradigm for reconciliation. Among those who caused Jesus’ suffering, none contributed perhaps more than the apostles, his fair-weather friends, who abandoned him at precisely the moment when he most needed them. That emotional pain of betrayal was surely as great as his physical agony.

We must imagine the high drama implied in his encounters with them after he rose. How would he deal with them? Would he protest bitterly and throw what they did in their faces?

Looking at some of the forms of his presence as encounters rather than appearances perhaps more accurately describes the situation. In Luke 24:36-43, the wounds are both signs of bodily resurrection; and also evidence of the apostles’ betrayal.

Seeing the wounds, they had to have made the connection between their behaviour and what subsequently happened to Jesus. No wonder that they felt “terrified”. Had he returned to condemn them? But his response is as utterly unexpected as the resurrection itself.

His first words are “Peace be with you,” and he asks if they have anything to eat. They give him a piece of baked fish, which he takes and eats in front of them. In other words Jesus offers them peace before they have even acknowledged what they did. Then he invites himself to dinner. That is his revenge for their betrayal; he asks to share a meal with them.

In St John, we have the famous scene of “doubting Thomas”. There too Jesus “shows them his hands and his side.” The wounds are not only evidence of the resurrection’s reality but also instruments of reconciliation.

Jesus’ invitation to “put your finger here…” is what elicits Thomas’ response, “My Lord and my God.” The invitation to touch and see is not offered as a sign of condemnation but as an overture of forgiveness.

By his action Jesus was showing that it is mercy that generates repentance. We do not have to repent first before receiving mercy. What’s true is the converse. It is mercy itself that makes repentance possible.

The apostles remained paralysed until the crucified and risen Lord showed them his wounds for their acknowledgement, yet offering pardon and reconciliation. Only then could Thomas confess “My Lord and my God.”

Anthony Warren, the felon, remained defensive and paralyzed in his own way, until his victim, an eight year-old child, confronted him with her wounds: “What you done to me was wrong, but I still forgive you.”

Only then could he admit his guilt and confess sorrow for his action. Confession is not an extrinsic quality in the case of the disciples or with Warren, but intrinsic to the act of forgiveness itself. The generosity of the victim is what makes everything possible.

Ultimately, of course, we cannot make full reparation for the suffering we cause in the world. We can never wipe such suffering out of existence. It remains part of our history and our future.

Kai Leigh Harriot, let us remember, is still paralyzed. What conversion does is to reconstitute relationships on an entirely new foundation, based on mercy, confession, penance – and solidarity. The aim of reconciliation is the generation and nurture of a new communion.

It is the victim who makes this possible. “The lamb redeems the sheep,” as the old Easter sequence, Victimae Paschal Laudes, expressively put it. In the paradox of the Gospel, it is those who follow Jesus through crucifixion and resurrection, who embody the good news that the way of mercy and forgiveness is the way, a different way, to live.  

The community of such persons, in theological terms, is the ecclesia crucis, “the Suffering Church” or “the Church of the Cross.” And their function is exactly the same as the Cross of their name. They mediate forgiveness and reconciliation, and the hope of a world precisely without victims.

This is not knowledge reserved for theologians or people who have spent time studying the Scriptures. At the back of the Kai Leigh Harriot’s outlook we must imagine some early home catechesis.

What we also see, of course, is that in matters like these too a little child can lead them.