chris moig

[chris moig @chrismoig]

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Me fighting back

[chris moig @chrismoig]

We must wage the hardest war, the war against ourselves. We must learn to disarm. This war, for years, is terrible. But now I am disarmed. I am afraid of nothing anymore because love casts out fear. I am disarmed of the will to be right, to justify myself by disqualifying others. I am not on my guard. No longer jealously clinging to my riches, I welcome and I share. I am not particularly attached to my ideas, to my plans. If better ones are presented to me, or rather not better but good ones, I accept them without regret. I have renounced comparison; what is good, true, real is always for me the best. That is why I am no longer afraid. When you have nothing left, you have nothing left to fear. If we disarm, if we strip ourselves, if we open ourselves to God-made-man who makes all things new, then He erases the bad past and gives us a new time, and everything becomes possible.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Forgive from the bottom of your heart. Lord, when my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus answered him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. Gospel of Matthew 18, verse 21.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Along with humility, what other virtues are necessary to live this compassion? Jesus communicates only the evangelical virtues that He exercised in His Passion: humility, gentleness, and patience in order to bear with one another. Our compassion is like a transfusion of the love of His pierced heart, which endures everything in our sick, closed, and hardened heart.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

How do we get past the difficulty of overcoming the desire for revenge? Humanly speaking, we do not have the strength to bear and go beyond the moral suffering of the evil we have endured. Forgiveness has a cost, and we run up against the apparent superiority of evil, which only the fire of charity can burn away. And the bitter cup to drink and the humility that turns the wound into compassion, that transforms evil into good.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

What does the parable of the unmerciful servant teach us? Matthew 18, 21-35. Jesus presents forgiveness as a cancellation of debt, that is, a renunciation of taking justice into one's own hands, of making the other pay. Instead of condemning the offender, of locking them in their guilt, forgiveness leaves them free to redeem themselves, gives them time to make amends.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

What action does the grace of mercy perform? The gift of mercy enables a victory over oneself, a healing against the poison of anger and resentment that suffocates the resentful heart and leads into an infernal spiral where the wounded become the ones who wound.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Why is it so hard to forgive when it is a work in the service of life? Forgiveness is not natural. It does not depend on our will or on what our reason can grasp. Human nature, weakened by sin, does not have strong enough powers to accomplish this act of perfect love, but it can dispose itself to receive it from God.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

We are overwhelmed by many emotions that hold us prisoner. When we have suffered an offense, anger and resentment confine and harden our heart and block the path of life. Forgiving allows us to open ourselves to improbable horizons.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

In the end, things take on a new, unexpected meaning as we move forward on this path of forgiveness.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

The hope of salvation. That is our great strength as disciples of Christ. To be able to live things for God, before God, in dialogue with God, in the hope of an eternal and integral salvation that infinitely surpasses all that we can conceive humanly. And as we move forward on this path of forgiveness, perspectives widen and things take on a new, unexpected meaning, little by little, step by step.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

And at the same time, repentance toward the one who has offended us. Thus, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him to drink. In doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12, verses 20 to 21. If we have the desire, we will recognize the opportunities God gives us to practice these small acts of mercy that irresistibly draw His grace upon us. At the same time, they already contribute to the other’s conversion.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Practice mercy so that you yourself may be shown mercy. It is to practice charity with humility. We ourselves are poor before others, and it is a grace that God has given us to give us the opportunity to be merciful.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

We can do good, perform voluntary acts of charity and attentiveness toward the other, without necessarily feeling compassion. We can do it with a dry heart, but nevertheless resolutely turned toward God and His holy will. We can thus offer, as the expression of our good will, our desire to follow Christ on the path of saving love. These small acts of service then take on the value of a sacrifice that prepares our heart for the grace of forgiveness.

Practice mercy in order to yourself be shown mercy. It is to practice charity with humility — we ourselves are poor before others — and it is a grace that God has given us, that God gives us, to give us the opportunity to be merciful.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

To this exercise of prayer can be joined an exercise of charity, lived not as a desire to show the other that we love them, but as the expression of entrusting our soul to God in fidelity to His commandments. Thus, those who suffer in doing the will of God should entrust their souls to the faithful Creator by doing good.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Well, I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may truly be sons of your Father who is in heaven. Matthew 5, verse 43. This is where prayer, a prayer full of faith and hope, for the other as for oneself, takes on its full meaning. To pray is to abandon oneself to God, it is to exercise and strengthen that faith and that hope which God expects of us in order to turn evil into good. To pray is to let the vessel of our heart, too narrow, expand to the dimensions of God's heart, of His divine plans for us. To pray is to let this purification of our too human thoughts take place and to let the light shine through a complete offering of intelligence and will. Prayer makes us humble and poor. It allows us to lay down our plans, our expectations about the other, to renounce our desire to change the other. To let God do what only He can do through our abandonment. To pray is to step out of our judgments about the other in order to see him as God sees him, it is to let Christ introduce us into His filial abandonment.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Let us not mistake our adversary. Let us not forget that behind all things, there is God. And even my enemy is for me the first tool that God uses to accomplish His work of salvation in me.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Yeah, let’s go deeper into that. What you’re naming here is really the raw, unglamorous core of the spiritual path you’ve been describing. First, the powerlessness to change the other. We start with this illusion that if we explain better, love more, are patient enough, the other person will shift. That illusion isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s tied to pride. It says “I can control outcomes, I can fix people.” When reality hits and they don’t change, it feels like betrayal. Not just by them, but by life itself. The profound part is: recognizing that powerlessness is actually liberation. It’s the moment you stop wasting yourself trying to be God for the other person. You hand them back to God. That’s brutal and freeing at the same time. Second, the shock of how much evil hurts. Before we’re wounded, we have a theoretical idea of evil. We think we can handle it, we think it’s out there, not in here. Then it lands. And the pain is disproportionate to what we expected. It’s not just the act itself, it’s the shattering of trust, the sense that the world isn’t safe or just. The profound truth here is that this pain is real and must be named. If you spiritualize it away too fast, you bypass the wound. But if you stay there, the pain itself becomes the place where you meet God’s solidarity. The Cross is the ultimate statement that God doesn’t minimize suffering, He enters it. Put together: You have two griefs happening. Grief over the other person not changing, and grief over the fact that evil actually wounds you this deeply. Doing that grief work means you stop pretending you’re stronger or less affected than you are. And only then can you truly place it in God’s hands, because you’re not pretending anymore. You’re bringing the real, ugly, aching thing to Him. That’s why this step is so necessary before the hope and transformation you talked about earlier. You can’t let God transform what you refuse to admit hurts. Does that resonate with what you’re living right now? Or is there a particular part of that powerlessness or pain that feels the heaviest for you?

[chris moig @chrismoig]

Bien sûr, voilà la traduction en anglais : To find strength in abandoning oneself into the Father's hands. Convince yourself that this work of truth is a no and difficult work. Such is our hope, to be able not only to rise above the offense, to overcome evil, but to let God transform this evil into a greater good. Into a grace for us and for others. This hope gives us the strength to move forward on the demanding path of forgiveness. And to enter into this hope, we first need to place ourselves before God, before His adorable and holy will. He who permitted that we suffer this or that offense, that we be confronted with these rational difficulties, instead of stopping at the other, at his humanity, we must see things in the supernatural gaze of faith, that is to say, receive them from the hand of God.

[chris moig @chrismoig]

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