“You will never change”

If there is a buzz word in modern day business it is “change”. I mean we start teaching students from Year 11 and up about “resistance to Change” and “managing change” in business studies.
Rapid technological advances and a more globalised world have led to the word “change” being the supreme word in management. They say, good leaders must be adaptable to change.

Everything is changing. Culture, technology, business, demographics, trends, fashion, education, politics, laws, norms and political systems. Everything is changing… Some for the better, others for the worse but what is undeniable is our belief that all these have changed.

Yet what amazes me is that we constantly and more than frequently say this to people: “You will never change”.

When we are hurt from people more than once, we often say to them this line. We use it with our spouses, friends and children, when we are angry with them. And the legal system and crime statistics remind us every day that recidivism is high so those who commit a crime are likely to do it again. Off course we also know that those who are addicted to a substance are often insulted that also “they will never change”.

Sure, we have personality traits that are archetypal and are part of who we are and so remain the same but human beings are the most adaptable creatures and we manage change better than anyone else.

Yet we insist to deal with anyone who errs or commits a crime after serving their sentence by not accepting that they have changed.

Our fear and lack of trust in people’s goodness; and most importantly our lack of trust that goodness in people will triumph over evil causes us to hold this belief. We also lack trust in the power of love to change people.

Yet in this last week of the Season of the Resurrection we are reminded that the resurrection is change “par excellence”. It is the change, the transformation from death to life, from revenge to love. In His resurrection the risen Christ restored our ailing bodies and opened the way to real and everlasting change. And by the way this also what the Eucharist is about, a transformation of the “work of human hands” bread and wine to divine elements, body and blood. A supreme act of love.

Pope Francis recently has chosen to do the washing of the feet ceremony on Holy Thursday at a juvenile centre. He insisted in another gathering where he also visited adult prison that even those who are the worst criminals can change. He said this: “Jesus comes to save us from the lie that says no one can change”. 

Wow… How powerful is that? God became man; Jesus came so he gives us another chance because God believes that we will change. Prophets came and Fathers came and we did not change. So Now Jesus, God’s love, “comes to save us from the lie that says no one can change”.

Let us pray that we learn to give others another chance. People will disappoint us and some won’t change but as long as we are open and are asking God to be merciful and give us another chance due to our repetitive sin, we too must be “merciful like the father” and believe that if we love, people can and will change for the better precisely because Christ is Risen.