An assault victim shows extraordinary forgiveness towards her teen-aged attacker; from a New York Times piece, A Moment of Grace, from earlier this week (Aug. 17):
In an age whose crabbed sense of justice finds expression in dismal
phrases like "zero tolerance" and "three strikes and you’re out," the
events in a Long Island courtroom on Monday came as an undeserved gift,
something startling and luminous.It happened when Ryan Cushing, a 19-year-old charged with assault
for tossing a turkey through a car windshield last fall, approached the
driver he nearly killed, Victoria Ruvolo. Ms. Ruvolo, 44, suffered
severe injuries and needed many hours of surgery to rebuild her
shattered facial bones.When Mr. Cushing left the courtroom after pleading guilty, he came
face to face with his victim for the first time. He said he was sorry
and begged her to forgive him.She did. She cradled his head as he sobbed. She stroked his face and
patted his back. "It’s O.K.; it’s O.K.," she said. "I just want you to
make your life the best it can be.". . . Mr.
Cushing, who threw the turkey, could have faced 25 years in prison. At
Ms. Ruvolo’s insistence, prosecutors granted him a plea bargain
instead: six months in jail and five years’ probation. * * *The prosecutor, Thomas Spota, had been ready to seek harsh
punishment for a crime he rightly denounced as heedless and brutal.
"This is not an act of mere stupidity," Mr. Spota said. "They’re not 9-
or 7-year-old children."That is true. But Ms. Ruvolo’s resolute compassion, coming seemingly
out of nowhere, disarmed Mr. Spota and led to a far more satisfying
result. * * *Court testimony by crime victims is often pitched as a sort of
retributive therapy, a way for angry, injured people to force criminals
to confront their shame. But while some convicts grovel, others smirk.
Many are impassive. It’s hard to imagine that those hurt by crime
reliably find healing in the courtroom. Given the opportunity for
retribution, Ms. Ruvolo gave and got something better: the dissipation
of anger and the restoration of hope, in a gesture as cleansing as the
tears washing down her damaged face, and the face of the foolish,
miserable boy whose life she single-handedly restored.
(Emphasis added.)
That Jesus and his talk about forgiveness — whatever else he might have been, he was one smart fella.
if we need to look for reasons to praise God, we find a couple of them right here:
- Our ability to learn and to try to change our lives accordingly: that is, to repent, as we see in the teenager who threw the turkey;
- Our ability to see the bigger picture than just our own immediate, narrow interests, and to act accordingly — as we see in this case, the woman hit by the turkey, who forgave her attacker and, we can hope, gave him a nudge that maybe, just maybe, might take his life down a different path.
Laudemus Deo.
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