MERCY PATHWAYS: Forgiving

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP
Pope Francis reminds us often that the Year of Mercy is the Year of Forgiveness, which implies not only individual forgiveness but also social and collective forgiveness. The practice of forgiveness is a very significant pathway of mercy.
St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) speaks – like other Fathers of the Church – of two kinds of almsgiving: corporal almsgiving or giving to the needy what we can; and spiritual almsgiving, or forgiving the one who offends us. He adds that the first – corporal work – should be practiced with the indigent, and the second – spiritual work – with sinners. Thus, he ends, “you will always be able to give something: if not money, at least forgiveness.” For St. Augustine forgiving those who wrong us is the highest form of almsgiving.
God’s mercy is a forgiving mercy. Christians are asked to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts of others to us,” we pray in the Our Father. Jesus asks his followers to forgive others when they start praying: “When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your faults” (Mk 11:26).
Following the Way, the true followers of Jesus forgive all and always (Lk 6:37-38). If they do not forgive, they are not forgiven (Mt 6:14-15). They must strive, moreover, to excuse others – like Jesus on the cross (Lk 23:34). We remember the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Mt 18:21-35). Indeed, “unless we forgive, we fight” (P. Kreeft). Words to ponder from St. Augustine: “Men without remedy are those who do not attend to their own sins to fix their attention on the sins of the others. They do not check what they can make right, but what they can bite.” At times, we criticize others just because their sins are different from ours (Kempis).
Forgiving is one of the spiritual works of mercy (cf. CCC 2447), and article 10 of the Creed (cf. CCC 976-983). Jesus gave to the apostles the power to forgive sins and asks all of us in return to forgive one another. Genuine merciful love of neighbor is forgiving. Like mercy, forgiving presupposes justice. Christian forgiveness “is simply the expulsion of hatred, the rejection of wishing evil to the other; it is hope in the conversion of the criminal” (E. Lasarre).
True Christian forgiving implies forgetting – erasing the faults of the neighbor against us. We ought to forget the sins or faults of others – always. How can I forget? I have a good memory! Yes, but it should be a reconciled memory. If one remembers the faults of others against us, he remembers them as he remembers a healed wound – the scar is healed, even unnoticeable.
How about our sins? We recall them only not to commit them again, and in general we forget them too: God forgave and forgot our sins, why remind him of them again? On the other hand, as the saints tell us, remembering them as offenses against God may help us be even sorrier for having committed them.
Let us not forget to forgive ourselves. We have to forgive ourselves for our sins and failures, for our bad past and focus on the present, on today (the only thing in our hands) journeying forward towards the future of hope – towards the all-embracing merciful and forgiving God.
God forgives us if we are sorry. How do we forgive others? Do we only forgive them when they are sorry? Not so: we are not God! We forgive always: “Not seven times, but seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22). God forgives us always, if we are sorry. Jesus continues inviting us to unconditional forgiveness (cf. Mt 18:21-35). It is good and fruitful to forgive others actually every night within our night prayers.
On his way back to Rome after his glorious trips to Cuba and USA (September 19-28, 2015), Pope Francis was told that some pedophile priests are not sorry for what they did to children. The Pope says: There is a difference between forgiving and being forgiven. We have to forgive always, but we shall receive forgiveness if we are sorry, that is, if we do not close the door to receive forgiveness.
On March 12, 2000, first Sunday of Lent of the Jubilee Year, the Day of Forgiveness, St. John Paul II asked God for forgiveness for all the sins the children of the Church have committed through the centuries, and also for the sins Christians commit today. It was beautiful for the Holy Father to ask for this double forgiveness. On April 10, 2014, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the damage priests have done “for having sexually abused children.” In July 2015, Pope Francis acknowledged failures and sins in the so called “conquista de América,” and asked for forgiveness to the peoples of Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
We are all sinners (cf. Jn 8:7) and need to ask God constantly for his merciful forgiveness. Like the Publican in the Temple (Lk 18:13). Like the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:21). Like Peter after denying Jesus three times (Lk 22:54-62). We are all sinners indeed and are truly sorry for our sins and strive seriously – as Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery and continues telling us – “from now on sin no more” (Jn 8:11). Jesus says: “I have not come to call the just, but sinners, to repentance” (Lk 5:32). God forgives when we are sorry for the sins committed and therefore decided not to commit them gain (cf. CCC 1451). God forgives us and we forgive those who offend us thus imitating our infinitely merciful God One and Triune.
As sinners, and in a particular way in the context of the Holy Year of Mercy, we realize the need of the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation individually and as members of the Church and concrete communities. Pope Francis invites us all to approach this essential sacrament and channel of God’s grace: Confession is “an encounter with mercy” (The Name of God is Mercy).The Argentinian Pope adds: “Let us place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the center once more in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands. For every penitent, it will be a source of true interior peace.”
A card I received from a friend shouted at me: “Asking for pardon and forgiving make love new every day.”