Homily

There is a truth about spiritual life that I find is very difficult for people to accept, and that truth is about what it takes to forgive someone. Even though I have preached and talked on this topic many times over the past years, it is still sometimes very difficult for people to accept. What does it take to forgive another person? Simply an act of my will and my intention. To honestly say “I forgive” – that is all it takes. It does not require some kind of emotional change of heart, it does not mean that I no longer have any thoughts of anger, disappointment, betrayal, frustration or other negative emotions about the person who sinned against me. That’s a totally different thing. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with forgiving them.

When people say, “I can’t forgive him” what they almost always mean is that “I don’t feel like forgiving him,” or “I am still mad, so I can’t forgive him.” Well, whether we feel like it or not, we can always pardon another person, and we can do so even if we are still upset, even very upset, by what they have done. Forgiveness is an act of my will and my intention, nothing more. (Notice how I slipped that phrase in again?) Nowhere in the New Testament is there a requirement that we must reach some kind of emotional state of peace before we can forgive another person. It is true that Jesus says in today’s Gospel that we must forgive from the heart, and often people think that He is speaking about emotion, because in our culture the heart represents our feelings, and the brain represents our intellectual activity. But in the Bible the heart represents the center and source of our intellectual, moral and emotional thoughts and actions. It does include our feelings, but also our rational and moral operations. Jesus does not command us to change our feelings, but He does command us to forgive from the center of where we live. Thanks be to God we don’t have to be in a certain emotional state before we can forgive another, or the Lord’s command might be impossible for us to fulfill.

It is true that when we forgive others we can still be bothered by the thoughts of what the other person has done, and it is always good that we try to change those emotional responses. The reality of what they have done to us does not change. But we can work to change our response to that offense against us. And why not? Why would I want to keep thinking about past wrongs done to me? Why would I want to keep myself emotionally tied to someone who has hurt me? It seems to me that people will keep alive the emotionally charged memories of what others have done to them as if their keeping the wound open grants you some kind of power over the situation, or that it becomes some way of protecting yourself against future bad actions. Neither thing is true.

Yes, sometimes it is difficult to heal the wounds others have given to us, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying to do so and asking the Lord to help us overcome them. When we forgive others, we not only free them from actions of revenge on our part, but we also free ourselves from the thought that we must pay them back for their offenses. We free ourselves from potential sin, and in a certain way we free ourselves from that sin of the other person against us. The world teaches that retribution and revenge are marks of strength. But I ask you, who is the stronger person: the one who pays back, or the one who pardons?

It is true that action may have to be taken against the offender. If you embezzle money from the parish, you should be reported to the police, but that is to serve the needs of justice, not the desire for revenge. A person can be forgiven and still be given 5-10 years in a state prison. (And when that person is released from jail, don’t put him in charge of counting the collection.)

It is very easy to think on the sins of other people against us. It is very easy to call up past offenses of those sinners even in dramatic and colorful and emotionally charged ways. It is not nearly so easy to remember the severity, the persistence, the ingratitude, and the self-centered nature of our own sins. The line for people waiting to go to confession never extends all the way back to the church door, like the line-up for the coffee social table used to do. (Nonetheless, may coffee social return soon. It’s still a great line to have!) In the parable, the one man was forgiven an impossible debt, and yet he refused to forgive the tiny debt of his fellow servant. We are the people who have been pardoned from an impossible debt. How can we refuse to forgive those whose offenses against us never come close to matching our debt of offenses against the Lord? I understand the sins of others against us often may often seem so large, and our own offenses so very small. But the Lord of Life allowed Himself to be crucified even for the sake of our very small sins. Let continue to ask our heavenly Father to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.