Forgiveness

 There is something rather extraordinary about forgiveness.

If there is anything Jesus spent a tremendous amount of time doing while He walked this earth, it was forgiving sins. And why? Because He is the Redeemer. A redeemer brings something back. He restores what has been lost. Sin disfigures us. Sin wounds us. Sin separates us. And Christ comes to recreate us. In a sense, the story of creation begins again every time Christ forgives. We are recreated by His mercy. Thank God. Thank God that God is not like me. Thank God that God does not delight in the downfall of the sinner. There is no karma with God. The Gospel isn’t, “What comes around goes around.” The Gospel is, “Father, forgive them.” Jesus is hanging on the Cross, looking at the very people who put Him there, and He isn’t waiting for karma. He says, “Father, forgive them.” That’s the Redeemer. That’s what redemption looks like. And thank God. Because if God treated me according to “what comes around goes around,” I wouldn’t stand a chance. Instead, God gives me something I don’t deserve: mercy. He says, in effect, “Let’s begin again.” He recreates us. I have discovered something in my own life. Whenever I have judged another person—whenever I thought I had somebody figured out—I have often discovered that I was wrong. We don’t know everything another person carries. None of that excuses sin. But it should make us a little slower to condemn and perhaps a little quicker to have compassion. And then there is resentment. We send the hurt through ourselves again. We replay it. We relive it. And every time we do it, we experience the wound all over again. That’s why Sirach gives us such an extraordinary image: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” We hold tightly to the very thing that is poisoning us. We think we’re hurting the person who hurt us, when very often, we’re simply continuing to hurt ourselves. Maybe that’s what forgiveness really is: liberation. It doesn’t mean pretending that something didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean saying that what someone did was acceptable. It means I refuse to allow what someone did yesterday to determine who I am today. I refuse to hug anger tightly anymore. I let it go. And I leave the rest in God’s hands. Peter asks Jesus, “How often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus essentially tells him: Stop counting. Because God stopped counting a long time ago. Look at how much you have been forgiven. That’s the point of the Gospel: forgiven people are supposed to become forgiving people. St. Paul tells us why: “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” My life belongs to Him. Your life belongs to Him. And even the person who hurt me ultimately belongs to Him. So maybe I don’t have to settle every score. Maybe I don’t have to have the last word. Maybe I can simply live the new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” And leave the rest in God’s hands because Christ came to redeem us. He came to restore us. He came to recreate us. And sometimes, the greatest act of recreation God can accomplish in us is giving us the grace to finally open our arms—and let go of what we’ve been hugging so tightly. — Fr. Alfonse Nazzaro