Forgiveness: our Path to Peace and Love

FORGIVENESS: Our PATH to PEACE and LOVE

“Then Peter approaching ask Him, Lord, if my brother sins against me, how must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven.” (Mt 18: 21- 23)
The good Lord created you and me to live in freedom. Most of the time we take His gift for granted. He gave us this gift to be lived as He intended and designed with heart untroubled and with absolute trust in Him.
There is a golden cow around which our age now seems to worship – the idolatry of choice. When freedom is exercised without reference to truth and our obligations to one another in solidarity and relativism, it becomes a counterfeit that leads to the slavery of sin. The truth is that some choices are simply wrong and even if we are “free” to make them, we should not. The real question we should concern ourselves with is what we are choosing and what and who we become through the choices we make. That wonderful champion of authentic human freedom, the late Pope John Paul II, wrote frequently about the implications of the exercise of human freedom. This “conflict between two loves”, this “event of freedom” is experienced in each of our lives on a daily basis. The recurring questions of Eden still echo. How shall we exercise our "freedom"? On which tree shall we make our decision? Will it be the tree of disobedience, the choice the first Adam made against love or the tree on Golgotha’s hill where the second Adam, the Son of God, chose the obedience of salvific Love?
One of the choices we are invited to make daily is to live and love as Jesus. But to live and love as HE did painstakingly entails a lot of cleansing – a lot of purifying – a lot of self-emptying - a lot of forgiving others and most especially forgiving ourselves. The disciples asked Him a simple but profound question, “how often must I forgive?” Jesus’ proposal was radically different than the prevailing human wisdom concerning forgiveness i.e. I return to you what you gave me and worst. We are urged to forgive as often as possible. Forgiveness is a duty, and so it is illimitable and nothing should restrict the extent of forgiveness to be done. Jesus exhorts us to offer absolute and unconditional forgiveness. Men and women who live this way trod the path of true freedom. They continue to make the Lord present in their lives.
There was a time when I had been terribly and viciously battered in body, soul, and spirit by “friends” who were supposed to be close and true. Friends I have literally fed with my own hands. What I got were acts of defamation, slander and gossips sown to the wind to impugn and maliciously malign my name, integrity and honesty. As a human person, I wanted revenge- an eye for an eye... I wanted nothing less than to inflict more pains on them but enlightened by Jesus’ Words of LOVE, I bore all these and nailed their actions to the Cross of Jesus, there to stay and be disposed of by my Lord and Savior for He is the only ONE and my accusers who know where the truth lies. Though the scars of the painful wounds still linger on, I have learned to forgive them for the hurts and sleepless nights they have curved on my restless soul. I know now the Lord is subjecting me to a crucial test - one that I am supposed to withstand with strength and accept without question. I vividly recall what Jesus underwent and despite all the cruelty, insults and pains, He said: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Forgiveness is a thorny process – a mind-numbing introspection – that people need to hear about today more than ever. As human persons we need forgiveness, whether giving it or asking for it.
As we live in a community, we cannot underscore the importance of forgiveness in our lives. Thus, for a healing community, those who live in it need and offer forgiveness. We are healed by our forgiving attitudes. It is really about our own healing. We may experience serious or slight offenses, or they may be deep and profound. But in the end it is our choice, and it is the survival or damnation of our own souls that is at stake. In an age clamoring for “choice”, and making so many wrong choices that lead to sadness, despair and captivity, we who walk the way of Jesus Christ are called to demonstrate the true freedom that comes from making the right choice, the choice of love, the choice of boundless forgiveness. When a person is lost in the black night of depression, our covenant relationship with God and with each other calls us to be a light in the darkness. A good beginning would be to start by forgiving and then share the LOVE and PEACE of Christ.
Thus, in the “struggle between freedoms” and the “conflict between loves”, let us go for the choice of interminable forgiveness.
“And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.” (Lk 11: 4)
–rra 12- 01- 05