Long held bitterness and anger are poisons in life I freely choose to drink, hoping fervently that they will hurt, if not destroy, the person who hurt me. But in reality, I’m the one drinking the poison; I’m the one dying pathetically and needlessly.
In my youthful Army days I long held on to the anger and the bitterness toward my fiancé Sarah when she called our wedding off in 1984. It was only 2 or 3 days before the ceremony and it completely floored me! I was a young Sergeant in the US Army back then. I was deeply angry, even bitter, and I wanted her to be as miserable in her life as I now was in mine.
To that end I directed all my energies in my waking hours, allowing that anger to fester and grow, while ruining my health and my sleeping hours. That anger was a diabolical weight on my soul, a black poisonous stain on my heart, creating chaos in my brain and pulling down my health. But it was a choice I was making over and over, embracing and feeding that anger from within!
I was finally freed from those chains of anger and bitterness by God’s saving grace, poured out into my soul by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, when I freely turned to God in my deep desire to finally unburden my soul and give my life to Jesus through the Life in the Spirit seminar!
Today I need to find that same healing in forgiveness – if not the full cleansing of my memory – of all the emotional crap, the deep-seated pain, the monstrous sins and twisted mind games Fr. Alphonsus Duran used on the men and women in Miles Jesu for decades – all for controlling my M.J. brothers and sisters and me to the greatest extent possible. Lives and vocations were ruined to indulge the sick appetites of one man. He was eventually removed by the Holy See as the Father General after failed attempts by various individuals over roughly 40 years.
Finally in 2007-08, our little group of 12-15 men went to the Holy See to turn Duran in. We counted on strength in numbers and they couldn’t ignore all of us together. Duran’s seminary “bestie” friend was a Sottosecretario (a powerful Under-secretary) who’d rescued him more than once. But Duran had no defence in the face of a group, and he was removed from Miles Jesu, to be kept in confinement and under supervised medical watch till his death some years later.
My days in that religious Institute are long since passed while the pain and anger which wounded our souls remains. It gets stirred up now and again at a moment’s notice from a word or a memory. It is that bitter residue I long to, indeed I choose to unload on the mighty, merciful shoulders of our Lord Jesus and into the depths of His healing Sacred Heart!
In the words of the beloved George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life, “Please God, let me live again!” As difficult as it may be, I freely choose to pray for the eternal salvation of the soul of Fr Duran for the good of my own soul, for my healing and freedom in Christ Jesus! Please God, I truly do want to live again!