by Dcn. Bob Bonomi
For the last two weeks we’ve been on a journey with Jesus learning about what it takes to be His disciple.
• It began when He explained to His disciples about how He was going to suffer and die at the hands of others and how we too need to be ready to embrace the crosses in our own lives.
• It continued last week with how we have the responsibility to provide fraternal correction to others and have been given the power to forgive others when we have been hurt.
• Today we learn about the consequences of not using that power to forgive.
We begin with the directive from the book of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, better known as Sirach: “Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.”
Then, from Psalm 103: “Bless the LORD, my soul; and do not forget all His gifts, Who pardons all your sins, and heals all your ills”
And from today’s Gospel: "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”
We also hear of the consequences of unforgiveness: “Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?" Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart."
Forgiveness. Easy to say, hard to practice. Yet we pledge just that, to forgive others, every single time we recite the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us …”
Whenever we contemplate forgiveness, I think there are four important questions that we must ask ourselves:
1. What keeps us from forgiving others?
2. What is the one thing that we cannot forgive in others?
3. Is forgiveness a sign of weakness?
4. Can we admit our own need for forgiveness?
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The last one may actually be the easiest to answer, at least superficially. “Do I need to be forgiven for something I’ve done or failed to do?” We usually acknowledge that whenever we say the Confiteor at Mass: “I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I’ve done and in what I’ve failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” And we usually have a list of our sins ready for Confession.
But what about the forgiving the sins of others? The other three questions can be closely intertwined: has someone done something so heinous that they don’t deserve forgiveness from me? Something that I want them condemned for and to suffer for for all eternity, or at least for the rest of their life? If I grant someone forgiveness, does that mean there are no more consequences for their actions?
These are complicated issues but there is one other question which needs to be answered: “WHY?” Why can I not forgive? Why do I think something cannot be forgiven? Why should I forgive someone if I cannot forgive myself?
Often the answer to “why” is both simple to say and difficult to resolve. It's PAIN. Pain blinds us. When we are hurt, we want the pain to go away, and if we can’t make the pain go away, then we want others to suffer with us, especially the one who caused the pain. We seek vengeance. How often in today’s action movies are we shown revenge as a way of getting even with someone who has hurt us? If it isn’t a person that caused us harm but something else beyond our control, we still seek for someone, something, we can blame.
But we are commanded to forgive. Again the question, why?
Well, one reason is because we are told to, and we see this reflected throughout the Bible. Today’s readings are examples of the command to forgive, and there are plenty of other scriptures that show forgiveness in action. For example, in the Acts of the Apostles we see St. Stephen, one of the first deacons and the first recorded martyr, crying out in a loud voice as he was being stoned to death, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”; and when he said this, he fell asleep.” And don’t forget Jesus’ own words, from the cross: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
Closer to home, all we need to do is to look to the lives of the saints, especially the martyrs, to see the peace they experienced in the peak of their suffering. And we don’t have to look far into history to see that.
There is St. Maria Goretti, who was murdered in 1902 by Alessandro Serenelli as he assaulted her. She forgave him from her deathbed in the hospital the day after the attack.
Then, there's Pope St. John Paul II who, after surviving an assassination attempt in 1983, publicly forgave his assailant and asked for prayers for him. He eventually met with him and they developed a friendship with each other.
In her book, “Left to Tell”, Immaculee Ilibagiza, who at the age of 23 survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide, describes her journey of forgiveness. She spent 91 days hiding with seven other women in a 3’ by 4’ bathroom in a neighbor’s house. When she meets Felicien, a formerly successful and wealthy Hutu businessman who headed the gang that killed her parents now in prison, she looked him in the eye and told him that she forgave him. When she was asked how she could forgive him, she replied, “Forgiveness is all I have to offer.”
Finally, you may have heard me speak of the book “The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness” by Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal. In it he recounts his experiences as a prisoner during World War II at the Lemberg concentration camp and of being assigned to medical waste removal at its hospital. At one point he has an encounter with a mortally wounded Nazi officer who asked for a Jew – any Jew that the hospital staff could find – to come and serve as a sort of proxy that he could confess his actions to and to ask for forgiveness for an incident where 300 Jews were trapped in an apartment building which was set on fire and shot as they tried to escape. Simon is forced to come and listen, but he cannot bring himself to offer forgiveness. When he comes back the next day, the officer had died.
The book's second half is a collection of answers to letters he sent to various people, including other Holocaust survivors, religious leaders and former Nazis with the question of whether or not he should have offered forgiveness to the dying officer.
Of the 53 people who responded, most said “no, do not forgive.” As you might have imagined, not a single person of Jewish descent said “yes”, but the majority of those who expressed no religious affiliation also said “No”. Interestingly, of the Christians (including Catholics) who responded, over 50% believed it was OK to forgive or were at least uncertain about it. Only the Buddhists were unanimous about it being OK.
In order to prepare ourselves to face the emotions we experience in painful situations, St. Philip Neri suggested that we practice controlling our emotions by pretending that we’ve just suffered terrible insults or misfortune and then imagine ourselves imitating Christ’s example by bearing these burdens and offering forgiveness with patience and charity. This sort of rehearsing can eventually make it easier for us to automatically respond in a more loving way when faced with real affronts.
Remember, just because forgiveness is difficult does not mean it is wrong or impossible. Rather, the difficulty of compelling oneself to forgive belies the happiness, the relief – the peace – that comes when one is actually able to do so. Today’s Gospel intellectually tells us of the rewards of forgiving and being forgiven, but the stories of the saints and those in our own lives who have offered or received forgiveness gives us real-world hope and experience of God’s love through the power of forgiveness.
So I urge you: forgive, so that you too can be forgiven. Forgive, and make room in your heart for God’s love.
