response! =))

As blogger is screwing up on me, I shall have to re-publish my post. Grr.



I agree with Andre, that a recent day hero in the eyes of the Catholic church would be Pope John Paul II (whose name was actually Karol Wojtyla).

"He worked extremely hard as a pope, yet was so human and holy at the same time, something almost incomprehensible."
- Andre

To me, this sentence shows that the Pope was someone who resembled Jesus' character - a person who was both holy and human. In today's homily at Risen Christ's 11am mass, Father Larry (a Filipino priest) was telling us about how Jesus was able to forgive Mary Magdalene's sins. As Jesus was both holy and human at the same time (just like Pope John Paul II), He was moved by the sincerity of her actions, which made Him feel compassion toward her, and so, he forgave her.

This can be compared to the Pope, when he was almost assassinated by Ağca in 1981. Through a miracle, the Pope was critically wounded, but managed to survive the shooting. He then visited Ağca at the prison a few years later, and pardoned and forgave the man for his actions. This is somewhat a parallel to Jesus having forgiven the people who had prosecuted Him. In this way, the Pope was somewhat like Jesus, by being gracious and forgiving.

The Pope's extent of forgiveness is out of this world, because who else in the world would forgive the other person for shooting him? I definitely would not, because I would probably be blinded by hate toward that person for making me suffer for doing nothing wrong. This, my readers, is what makes the Pope a great hero today. His ability to forgive and extend his hand to the person who did him wrong is unrivalled.

By learning from him, I have been able to understand how important it is to be able to forgive a person, because harbouring ill thoughts toward other people will slowly kill you inside. You will then become just a shell, and hate as your driving force to live (think about "Meet the Robinsons" if you have watched it. The part about the flashback on how the evil guy turned evil...). The hate will eventually eat you up inside, which would make you walk further away from God.

The ability to forgive, and as many times as possible would make us learn to be more like Christ, which would strengthen our bond with Him, and enable us to walk closer with Him. This, dear readers, would then make us better Christians and people.