The Our Father “therapy”
“You are going the wrong way; this is the right way”, a smiling woman told me from her yard when I was going to the Mboko Parish. From long ago, this area has been without religious women, who left before the war.
Today, their home has been destroyed; because during the war the soldiers took everything that was good, so they could sell it.
During a brief time living with them, I was reflecting on some biblical passages together with the leaders of the Christian communities. The Parish is composed of the villages along the Tanganyika Lake and from the mountains.
One evening, during one of our free conversations, we began to talk about the recent war events. We discussed the war of 1996-1997 and the one of 1998-2003, both of which were against the civil population. “We saw horrible things” – told us a community leader-, “We lived everyday with the dead not knowing if morning would come. A respectable number of us escaped to Tanzania; others stayed to guard the church items. Now, we try to build peace.”
I was thinking about how difficult it can be to forgive. How we demand even the repair of a broken glass and how many of us make appointments with a psychologist to know how to manage our life traumas. But here, people start to live their lives without a psychologist or the assistance of a professional and they learn to repair damages they have no control of.
A catechist shared with us: “During war, a neighbor killed my father. After my father’s death, I noticed the neighbor began to avoid us, it was like he was afraid of us and he was ashamed. I went to look for him and I told him: ‘I know what you did. But now, let us forget the matter; war is over, let us be brothers and go ahead together. Your children will eat in my home and mine will go to yours. And it was in this way that I understood that, between the perpetrator and the victim, it is the victim who should take the first step.” The others agreed on his discovery.
“But, where did you find the strength to carry with your past and go ahead in peace?” I asked astonished. An old catechist smiled and answered: “In the ‘Our Father’, when we say: ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’. It is the time to show that we are Christians, and that we believe in these words. Often, I remember the words of Jesus on the cross: ‘Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing’.”
Echoes from the meetings in Mboko, along the Tanganyika Lake, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
