St. Anthony the Abbot Catholic Church

Cheryl McGuinness learned this secret of mercy at the foot of a strange and terrible cross. She is the widow of the co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which was hijacked and smashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. That morning, she and her two teenage children cried and suffered at the horrible loss of Tom, her husband.  In the midst of her tears, she remembered something that her husband, knowing that a pilot's job is risky, had told her long before: "If anything ever happens to me, you have to trust God. God will get you through it…”   She took that to heart, but it wasn't easy.

A turning point in the process came almost a year after the attack, when she went to Ground Zero to participate in the Victim Compensation Fund. When she arrived to Ground Zero, emotionally stunned, she looked into the pit where the buildings had once stood. As she looked at the remains, her eyes fixed on the only steel structure left standing. It was in the shape of a cross. She kept looking from the pit to the cross and her eyes focused on the cross. She prayed in the silence of her heart, "Lord, they killed my husband."

Then she seemed to see herself at the foot of another Cross, Christ's cross, on Calvary.  She heard God in her heart, inviting her to forgive the terrorists who had committed this atrocity.  She asked Him why, and the answer that came into her soul was: "Because I forgave you."

It was a moment of grace and of spiritual clarity for Cheryl, in which she saw that although she had never committed horrible acts of terrorism, she had indeed committed sins - she had done evil. And Jesus had forgiven her. It was then that she felt the inner strength she hadn't felt before, the strength to forgive her husband's murderers, and it changed the direction of her life. God doesn't ask us to forgive on our own strength, but He gives us the strength to forgive by forgiving us first: that's the secret to learning Christian mercy.

With practice, we can all learn to forgive the little offenses of every day. It's harder, though, to forgive the big things. Sooner or later, each of us will have to forgive a major offense, maybe even a life-shattering wound inflicted by someone we love dearly. Or we may run into a situation in which we ourselves have committed a sin so grave that we can't seem to forgive ourselves, even though we know God has forgiven us.

In these cases, it's much harder to follow Christ's command of limitless mercy, but not impossible. To prepare for that kind of situation, we need to fill our minds with examples of forgiveness and mercy, with the true stories of our brothers and sisters in the faith who have gone before us and learned to follow Christ closely and joyfully. These are the saints.

The saints are like a Hall of Fame for the Church; learning about their lives is like watching NFL “Road to the Super Bowl” videos. The saints weren't born holy. They struggled through all the same temptations and trials that we do. But they struggled victoriously, and that’s why the Church names them and puts them before us as examples of life. Pope Benedict spent the first five years of his pontificate teaching every week about a different saint, because he knows how much their example can inspire and encourage us.

All the saints learned how to accept and experience God’s mercy, and also how to be merciful toward others, though it wasn't always easy. We all have a favorite saint or two. Why not take some time this week to learn more about them, to read more than just a one-sentence summary of their lives. Let’s give them a chance to inspire us, so that we in turn can become true inspirations for others, true models of Christ-like mercy.