The True Conservative · Ronald T. Hardgrove

Episode 2311 - The True Conservative - Thank God it's Sunday!

April 12, 2026·20 min·2 clips

A Marine stays with a dying stranger who believes he is his son, setting up a lesson on divine mercy.

The episode opens with a parable: a Marine arriving at a Brooklyn hospital finds a dying stranger calling for his son. Rather than correct the mistake, the Marine holds the man's hand through the night because the dying man needed comfort. After the man passes, the Marine explains he had never met him but stayed anyway. The bishop then begins the Mercy Sunday homily by noting the liturgical greeting 'peace be with you' echoes the risen Christ's words. He focuses on the key juxtaposition in John 20: the risen Jesus shows his wounds and offers peace simultaneously. The wounds represent the sin of humanity — the bishop says plainly 'we killed him,' arguing that the whole world's cruelty, violence, and betrayal came out against Jesus. He references the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky to make the point that people who claim they would love Jesus if he appeared today would likely kill him again. The bishop rejects contemporary victimization culture, arguing Christianity inverts the modern tendency toward self-exculpation: in Christian terms, we are the ones who victimize the innocent, not the victims ourselves. The wounds alone, he says, leave people in despair; forgiveness alone is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called 'cheap grace' — grace without cost or demand. Only the combination — wounds and shalom — constitutes authentic Christianity. The bishop then explains how Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit onto the apostles and sends them to forgive and retain sins, making the church the institutional bearer of divine forgiveness through the ages. He gives two examples of forgiveness in action: the Amish community that forgave the man who killed children in their school, and Erica Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, who offered forgiveness to her husband's accused killer at his memorial. The bishop turns pastoral, admitting he himself struggles to forgive certain people who have wounded him, and invites listeners to identify someone they find hard to forgive. The episode closes with a reflection on Thomas, read as a repetition of Adam and Eve's error: demanding to possess divine grace on his own terms rather than receive it as a gift. The bishop reads Christ's blessing on those who believe without seeing as a commendation of those who receive grace graciously.

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