Forgiveness

Doug Culp

A few weeks ago, we were led into our Lenten journey by these words of Jesus, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” (Mk 1:15) As we continue on the road that leads to Holy Week, it might be prudent to dig even deeper into what the call to repentance and belief in the Gospel entails.

The two conversions

Each of us is called to conversion by Jesus. The first conversion consists in our hearing the Gospel, our encountering Christ, our believing in him, and our deciding to order our lives accordingly. Baptism, of course, is the primary place for this fundamental conversion. In Baptism, we renounce evil and win salvation, i.e. the forgiveness of all our sins and the gift of new life. This first conversion is completed when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation and the gift of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. These Sacraments of Initiation together leave us “holy and without blemish.”

However, the new life granted to us in Christian initiation does not mean that we will remain “holy and without blemish.” Our human nature remains frail and weak. What’s more, we still tend toward sin which makes a holy life oriented toward eternal life a continuous struggle.

Turning back

The word, sin, derives from the Greek hamartia which means “to miss the mark.” It is something we all struggle with because the fact is that we live in a fallen world. Consequently, disorder is bound to occur as we continuously “separate” ourselves from God by sin.

The gift of prayer invites us to “turn back” to God and re-enter a state of communion with our source and our destiny where transformation alone can occur. Authentic prayer then involves calling to mind those ways in which we have turned away from God and have missed the mark. It involves our asking forgiveness, a forgiveness that is always offered, in order that we may be restored to proper order, proper communion.

The twist

Now so far, the emphasis has been placed on our asking for the forgiveness of our sins so that we might reenter communion with God. God’s merciful love is what gives us the confidence that our sins will in fact be forgiven granting us salvation, which means that we are made whole; we are healed.

However, there is more to this notion of forgiveness as we are taught by Jesus in the words of the “Our Father.” In this perfect prayer, we encounter the line, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

In the gospels, we come across this law repeatedly: the measure we use will be used against us and we will be judged as we judge others. Therefore, we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect and we are to love one another as Christ has loved us. In the Lord’s Prayer, we continue this “like for like” of the eternal: forgive us as (and only in the manner and to the extent that) we forgive others.

What’s it all mean?

The Catechism (2840) explains the outpouring of God’s mercy “cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us. Love, like the Body of Christ, is indivisible; we cannot love the God we cannot see if we do not love the brother or sister we do see.  In refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters, our hearts are closed and their hardness makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love; but in confessing our sins, our hearts are opened to his grace.”

So we see that the question is not whether God forgives us, but whether we are open to receive this forgiveness. God first freely gives forgiveness in order that we might have life more fully in communion with the Trinity, our eternal destiny – but we have to choose to respond to this gift by receiving it.

Now, God knows that it is beyond us to not feel hurts or to forget offenses so He gives us grace through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Confessing our sins opens our hearts to this gift of grace through which, as the Catechism teaches, “the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.” In other words, through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Holy Spirit can make our mind the same mind of Jesus Christ.

It is our confessing and dying to sin through the gift of God’s grace that allows the “mind of Christ” to well up within us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Only then are we free to forgive as Christ forgives. Only then do we participate in the forgiveness of the Father who does not wait to give forgiveness until it is asked for and who offers reconciliation to the offender.

Our forgiveness of others then represents the good fruit that indicates we have responded to the freely given, unmerited gift of forgiveness we have received. It is a fruit of being in communion with God now, which de facto means that our sins have been forgiven.

Conversely, our failure to forgive others after having received forgiveness indicates our rejection of God’s offer of communion both now and, therefore, eternally. So, during the remainder of this Lenten season and beyond, let us choose (and it is a conscious decision) to forgive as we have been forgiven so that we may be forgiven as we forgive.

Doug Culp is the delegate for administration and the secretary for pastoral life for the Catholic Diocese of Lexington.