Well, After All, It Happens

            A group of Franciscan friars in Florence, Italy has been plagued with a series of thefts of Bibles from their church.  In response, the friars put up a note in full view of worshippers.  The note said that they hoped the thief would see the error of his ways, but that if he did not, they hoped the thief would be stricken with diarrhea.  That’s not the exact language; if you want to see the exact language, you can go here.

            Well, that’s one approach to stopping crime, I suppose.  It certainly gives a whole new slant on Jesus’ statement to turn the other cheek.

            A spokesman for the friars said that they had acted out of frustration and were confident the act would be forgiven.  He said, “It is not exactly clean language, but we couldn’t put up with it any longer.  The Lord and the faithful will understand.”

            I won’t speak for the Lord, but speaking just for myself, I do understand.  Haven’t you ever reached a point where you just felt like you’d taken all you could take and you had to do something?  I have.  I think God does understand that, too, and does forgive it.

            Saying God will understand it is not the same as saying it’s okay, though.  Frustration, by itself, is usually not a very good motivation for an act.  Most of the time, when we act out of frustration, we not only do something that doesn’t help, we often do something that’s actually counterproductive.  When we act out of frustration, not only do we not make the situation better, we often make it worse.

            This is not to say that frustration is always a bad thing.  What we need to do, however, is control our frustration.  Lashing out in an uncontrolled fashion rarely works.  It can be a good thing when frustration prompts us to act, but the action we take needs to be taken rationally and intelligently. 

            We all feel frustration sometimes, but when we do, we need to take a step back.  We need to take a deep breath.  Then, we need to pray for God’s help and God’s guidance.  We need to trust that God will show us a way forward that can help the situation.  Then, we need to act in a way that shows love to everyone concerned.