A Surprising Phone Call

This evening I received a very surprising phone call. It was from a religious brother who had worked at the Catholic high school where all of my children attended school. He has been gone from there for more than seven years. While he was there, he and I had clashed on more than one occasion because he was extremely liberal and I ascribe to the more conservative, orthodox views when it comes to the Catholic faith. More than once, he had hurt my very character. After catching up on my family and on what he was currently doing, he finished with the following, in this abbreviated form. "Now to get down to the real reason for my call. I am calling to apologize. I have been bothered for years for the way I treated you while I was at the Catholic high school. I know we differed in opinion on more than one occasion. You always treated me with love and respect and kindly. But, I know that I did not treat you in that manner. I did not treat you with respect. I was not kind to you. I am sorry for the way I treated you for all those years and I am asking for you to accept my apology. I should have done this and called you a long time ago. But, I've been thinking about this a lot lately and asking myself what I was waiting for, so I decided to pick up the phone and make the call. Will you accept my apology?" I was taken aback by his humility, because this was not the man I remembered from years gone by, who had been so confident in his ways; so sure that he had the answers and that I was always wrong. I told him I was very honored to have him call me and that I would be glad to forgive him, although I said I hadn't given a lot of thought to holding anything against him all those years. I had already forgiven him for any hurts from long ago. It was a lesson for me in asking for the mercy of God and for forgiveness from my brothers and sisters whom I had hurt. It is never too late to ask for forgiveness if we realize we have hurt someone. Just like it is never too late to ask God to forgive us. What a wonderful gift of forgiveness he received right before Christmas. Praise God.