forgiving each other in the name of love

Today is the last day of our one-week class retreat and Fr Dennis, our retreat speaker, talks about the bottomline of priesthood...The discussion struck me and made me reflect on the purpose of my existence in the monastic and as a future priest.

From my own reflections, priesthood is the very essence of God's forgiveness.

God enables Priesthood to suffer and endure only to arrive at a certain point of forgiveness and eventually atttain reconciliation and communion with HIM, with the ministry and with the people.

At the end of our session, the retreat speaker posed a question:

What is my personal bottomline for being a priest?

Can we endure the priesthood in the most adverse condition?

Quoting this warm song from my favorite singer, I should say, priesthood is God's way of loving us and forgiving our transgressions to finally invite us to be in communion with Him at the end.

I was wrong when I hurt you
But did you have to hurt me too
Did you think revenge will make it better?
I don`t care about the past
I just want our love to last
There`s a way to bring us back together

Chorus:
I must forgive you
You must forgive me too
If we wanna try to put things back
the way they used to be
`Cause there`s no sense in going over and over
The same things as before
So let`s not bring the past up anymore

Out of all the good we had
You only keep track of the bad
Though you knew I never really loved her
Didn`t anyone tell you yet
That to forgive is to forget
How can you be mad if you don`t remember

Repeat Chorus:

I must forgive you
And you must forgive me too
It`s the only thing that`s left
that we haven`t try to do
One thing that I`m sure will work
That we haven`t tried before
Let`s not bring the past back anymore