Lent is a season of forgiveness. In the readings, we repeatedly hear about God’s mercy towards people in need of forgiveness. Many Catholics seek out the sacrament of reconciliation during Lent, especially now with the "Light is On" program making confession so readily available.
But God also calls us to take the forgiveness that we receive and give it to those with whom we are at odds. This is certainly the more difficult part of forgiveness. After all, we all want to be forgiven. But many times we are slow to forgive others who have hurt us.
The key is to realize that God will help us forgive others if we are open to reconciling with them. In fact, God will supply supernatural power to forgive if we simply trust Him. A few examples:
Many remember the episode some years ago when a gunman killed several Amish school children in Pennsylvania. He locked them in their one room schoolhouse, intended to sexually abuse them and then murdered them in cold blood before the police killed him.
What you may not have heard about is that afterwards, the Amish families reached out to the killer’s wife and children, telling the reporters who were stunned by this behavior: "They are grieving too."
Later that week, the Amish attended the murderer’s funeral, again explaining to the press: "Jesus said to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, forgive as you have been forgiven." The newspaper writers were stunned. For all the talk of Christianity in our culture, so rarely had they actually seen anyone really behave like Jesus.
A woman’s teenage son with his newly minted license picked up a hitchhiker who proceeded to rob him and gun him down. A year later, the mother visited her son’s killer in jail. Filled with resentment and hatred, she wanted to ask the young man why he had done that to her son. Was it drugs? Was he deranged? However, as she sat across from the young man, the convict broke down. Placing his head on the table between them, he grieved for what he had become, for all that he had done and for the hurt he had caused this woman.
The mother, moved by compassion, reached out and touched the young man, comforting him and telling him it would be ok. Later when she told her friends what had happened they were shocked.
"How could you touch that animal after what he did?" they inquired.
"In that moment, I saw my own son sitting there across from me. They are about the same age. And I thought, if that was my son, I would want someone to reach out to him," she explained.
Corrie ten Bloom wrote a book called The Hiding Place about her experience in a Nazi concentration camp where her family was tortured and killed. She survived and starting a speaking ministry where she described how God helped her endure the ordeal and had taught her about His powerful forgiveness through the Cross.
At one church in Munich following her talk, a former SS soldier approached her. She recognized him immediately as one of the guards who tortured her sister. The man thanked her for her message saying that he was relieved to know that God forgave everyone, even him.
She recounts: "His hand thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile. I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself."
Forgiveness to those who don’t deserve it is one of the few ways in which we are able to share in God’s supernatural power.
Lent is a season of mercy. Is there someone in your life that you need to forgive?
 | About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org. |
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