Reconciliation
A Lay Dominican meets her Nazi torturer 40 years later
This story was forwarded to me by a fellow Lay Dominican. It is from the National Catholic Register, and you can f ind it here.
I will briefly summarize, but encourage you to read the article. Maïti Girtanner was a promising pianist with a future ahead of her when WWII hit. She became a part of the French resistance. She would give piano lessons or play at parties while gathering intelligence for the resistance. She was caught and tortured by a Nazi doctor. As a result of extreme torture she was left with nerve damage that left her perpetually in pain, unable to play the piano, and in addition the torture rendered her unable to have children.
Her life was destroyed.
For decades after her rescue she suffered from the psychological affects of her torture, not the least of which was a strong desire for the death of her torturer. However, she wanted to move beyond.
“I shan’t make a tragedy of my life.”
From the article: “On another level she was aware that she faced a choice: living a life of on going bitter hatred against the man who had left her disabled or to choose to forgive him. She had begun to understand that forgiveness could never be just an intellectual idea; instead, it had to be something that was directed toward someone.”
In 1984, her torturer reached out to her and wanted to meet. He wanted to know if she still believed what she had held on to while he was torturing her. Did she believe in God and Heaven?
When they met he begged forgiveness. She forgave him. Later she would say, “I embraced him to drop him into the heart of God,” and still later, “Forgiving him liberated me.”
In 1948 she had became a Lay Dominican, called at that time a Third Order Dominican. Being a Lay Dominican allows a lay person to live out Dominican spirituality while remaining in the secular world. Her faith drew her to this spirituality and helped her to find solace and meaning in the aftermath of her torture.
She wrote a statement that struck me as important and insightful, and maybe the more authentic because of all she had experienced.
“Forgiveness does not come about in the abstract; it calls for someone to whom it can be addressed, someone to whom it can be received.”
As a Catholic and fellow Lay Dominican, this struck me as a very nice insight into the power and efficacy of the Sacrament of Reconciliation vs the idea of, "just take it to Jesus, why do you need a priest?"
Keeping in mind that the Greek word for soul is psyche, and that the soul is defined as the animating principle, I wish to elaborate a bit on psychology and what happens when an organization has a profound understanding of this meaning of psyche.
Psychology then is the study of the soul, the animating principle, that which separates us from inanimate objects. As a quick aside, this would mean that all animals and plants, any living thing, has a soul. Over the years, the term has shifted focus to mental activity, which is a specific subset of properties of some living things, and probably unique to animals vs plant and mushrooms. There are not, for example, pine tree psychologists. But there are tree doctors. Living things all can use some healing.
I once heard that you will eventually confess your sins to someone, be it a trusted friend, your bartender, your therapist, or yes, your priest. This is the soul reaching out, trying to make things right.
However, your friend, bartender and therapist cannot look at you and say,
"God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
Note the formula. “May God give you pardon and peace.” And, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And finally, “Amen.” (empahsis mine)
The translation of this Hebrew word, “Amen” that I like best is, "May it be so according to God’s will."
I hope that it is clear that the priest is not the one forgiving the person in the confessional. But we have psychological needs. When we tells someone a deep dark secret, we want to hear in return, “It’s ok.” You can get that from your friend, your bartender, your therapist. But, “It’s ok” doesn’t last. You may find yourself telling someone else the same things. Because, unless the person you are talking to is the one you have harmed, something is missing. Rather, someone is missing.
When we have sinned, and we “take it to the priest” we are taking it to Jesus.
The priest is providing that personal link, he is standing in for Christ. We need that visceral sensory experience of saying out loud what we have done wrong, asking out loud for forgiveness, and hearing, actually hearing with our own ears, tangible words of absolution.
Having been on the receiving end of this absolution formula, I can attest to the salutary psychological benefit that I receive when I hear those words.
As this poor torture victim notes, “Forgiveness does not come about in the abstract; it calls for someone to whom it can be addressed, someone to whom it can be received.”
Reconciliation can only happen between two parties, the aggrieved and the aggriever. This is a psychological reality. Unless the person you are telling your deep dark secret to is the person you have harmed, you cannot experience reconciliation by telling your friend, bartender, or therapist. You can with God.