By Joe Mazzella
I can still remember it like it was yesterday. My children were still young and we had all gotten into the car to go grocery shopping. Our car was a beat up, old, Ford Escort with a cassette player in it. We had a case full of cassettes behind the gear shift that we would listen to when the radio didn’t come in clear. This day we arrived at the store, went in to get another week’s worth of groceries and came back to the car only to find that the case full of cassettes was gone. Somebody had stolen it.
The kids were shocked but for some reason I just started laughing. It was the thought of the thief opening up the case and seeing what he had stolen. There were a few cassettes that I had bought back in college and were a decade old. The rest of them were made tapes where we had recorded songs the kids and I liked off the radio. I could just see the look of disappointment on the thief’s face and I laughed again. When I told the kids what I was thinking they laughed too. For weeks to come whenever we listened to the car radio or played the one cassette that was still in the player we would laugh again thinking about our stolen “treasures” and the sad thief.
I think it was our way of releasing our anger at the thief and wishing him the best in spite of what he had done to us. It was freeing our hearts from hate and embracing the Lord’s Prayer to “Forgive those who sin against us.” It felt good too. It felt good to forgive. It felt good to laugh. It felt good release our attachment to things and embrace instead the power of Love.
Our act of forgiveness was a small thing, but faith calls for us to be part of something big even while doing something small. May all of your days be full of faith then. May they be full of forgiveness, full of laughter, and full of love. May you always share the music in your soul and the Love in your heart with God and with everyone you meet.