Once upon a time in their marriage, Andrew did something really stupid. His wife Moira chewed him up for it. He apologised; they made up. However, from time to time, Moira would mention what he had done. ‘My dear,’ Andrew finally said one day, ‘why do you keep bringing that up? I thought your policy was ‘forgive and forget.’’ ‘It is,’ Moira said. ‘I just don’t want you to forget that I’ve forgiven and forgotten.’
Peter’s opening question, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive the one who sins against me? Up to seven times?” reflects a commonly held limit on quietly enduring one’s mistreatment. To forgive once is challenging enough, so Peter’s “up to seven times” must have seemed truly heroic. Jesus’ answer to that question: “not seven times, but seventy-seven times,” set the bar so high as to be virtually impossible to reach, as in biblical language it meant “always”. Forgiving is hard for two main reasons, and both stem from common misunderstandings. The first is measuring forgiveness by emotions; the other is the belief that forgiveness equals unconditional and inconsequential acquittal of the party at fault. Because both are misunderstandings, let’s try to put them right. This sermon is not – by any means – an exhaustive essay on forgiveness; it’s barely touching base.
We don’t have to forgive people for doing nice things or for making us happy. It’s a truism, but the need for forgiveness comes to the fore after we have been hurt. Pain can take different forms: physical, mental, or a mix of both. Whatever shape the pain takes, it always has a strong emotional component. Hurt feelings can remain raw long after physical and mental wounds have healed. That’s why forgiveness can seem so difficult, sometimes even impossible. However, forgiveness has nothing to do with emotions or feelings for a very simple reason – we don’t have control over them. If I ask you to dislike me right now, it should be easy – I’ve given you many reasons for that; if I ask you to love me, that’s impossible, because there isn’t a single reason for that. Emotions are our involuntary, instinctive, visceral responses to certain situations or attitudes. We can’t trigger them at will, nor can we shut them down. We can only control what we do while under their influence. Consequently, an act of forgiveness cannot be a matter of emotions; it’s an act of my free will. In other words, regardless of what I feel or how I feel, I decide to forgive.
This brings us to another common misunderstanding: forgiveness as an unconditional, inconsequential acquittal of the party at fault. We have a very strong sense of natural justice that malevolence must be punished, which is absolutely right. Let me ask you a simple question: how often have you hurt people intentionally, out of ill-will? How often have people felt hurt by you because of your ill-judgement, ignorance, mindlessness or misjudgement? Most of the time, when we hurt people, we do so unintentionally because we cannot foresee the consequences of our actions. I don’t think any speeding driver is hell-bent on killing other people; it’s their ignorance, lack of imagination, selfishness and so on. This is true of most of us most of the time. How apt sounds Jesus’ prayer on the cross: “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) The parable in today’s gospel calls for an honest examination of your own conscience, which puts other people’s misdeeds and misbehaviour into a different perspective. As a young priest, I was quite strict and demanding – essentially a nasty piece of work. Over the years, my own sins, failures and weaknesses have blunted that sharp edge; the more I have personally experienced God’s mercy, the more sympathetic I have become. One of the most important rules I adopted long ago was formulated by St Ignatius of Loyola: “Where there are two ways to interpret the words of another, one bad and one good, we should assume good intent.” I apply this rule to words and also actions. It’s proved to work miracles!
Last but not least, forgiveness is good for you. Its absence can be a massive burden that negatively affects your life. There are people who have wrecked their lives through hatred; unfortunately, quite often it’s not just their own lives. Forgiveness is the first, most important step towards a better life. When you forgive, when, by a positive act of will, you reject vengeance and hatred, you effectively cut off the ball and chain attached to your legs. Then you can learn to fly.
