Two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: “Today my best friend slapped me in the face.”
They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone: “Today my best friend saved my life.”
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, “after I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?” The friend replied “when someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.”
Is there anything that can help us forgive those who have hurt us? How can we forgive the drunk driver who killed the whole family on the road? How can we forgive the child predators or all of these mass shooters, including the one who killed 3 people at MSU and critically injured five last Monday? Is it even possible? We know how difficult it is for us to forgive much smaller offenses, so how can we forgive these big ones? These are some suggestions that I offer to people from time to time:
- Forgiveness is a decision not an emotion. Hopefully our emotions will follow our decision to forgive, but first we must decide to forgive.
- Forgiveness is God’s Grace and He is always ready to share that gift with us.
- Forgiveness is a process; it takes time and hard work.
- Forgiveness does not mean blotting out painful memories, but it does mean not acting out of them. That is why when the hurt is deep, therapy may be necessary to free us from acting out of past negative experiences.
- When people have difficulty forgiving a hurt, I sometimes say to people to repeat to themselves, “I will not allow that person to control my life. I take control of my life back from that person. From now on I will control my life.”
- Another thought that can help us to forgive is to remember that Jesus died to save the other person just as He died to save you. Try to visualize the person beneath Jesus on the cross. Can you see Jesus dying for that person?
Sometimes people say they will forgive if the other person makes an apology. I think that is in some way connected with wanting to control the other person. Forgiving somebody involves giving up the need for an apology and the need to control or dominate the person who hurt us. Surrendering the need to expect them to ask forgiveness frees us to forgive them.
When Mother Teresa accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1979, part of her acceptance speech went like this:
“It is not enough for us to say: ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor.’ Saint John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. (1 John 4:20) How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? And so, this is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt.
How can we love like this? We say that to err is human and to forgive is divine. It is a grace to forgive and when the hurt is great, we may need to pray a great deal for the grace to forgive. Mother Teresa wrote,
“To be able to love one another, we must pray much, for prayer gives a clean heart and a clean heart can see God in our neighbor. If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another.”
This upcoming Wednesday we begin Lent 2023. Please check the bulletin for our Lenten spiritual activities and set up your heart with the opportunity to accompany Jesus to Calvary, to be able to celebrate with joy and freedom the mystery of his Resurrection at Easter. Holy Lent to you all. Fr. Tom