Our Father 8: Forgive as we are forgiven

‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’  We have almost reached the end – the last two petitions ‘lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil will be considered together next month.

When I was a child, my family generally prayed together night and morning, and unsurprisingly the Our Father was one of the prayers said.  I well remember when we had fallen out how one sibling or another would fall silent during the words ‘forgive us…as we forgive’ and sit tight-lipped and unreconciled up to the end of the prayer.  We understood that to pray this prayer whilst in a state of white-hot rage against our brother or sister was pretty unwise.  When we were in this state, our parents would encourage us to forgive each other by a formal act.  (I remember once when being required to ‘kiss and make up’, saying with great vim ‘I’d rather kiss a cold poached egg’!) Reconciliation became part of the process of being able to pray the Lord’s prayer in its fulness.  Mercy, we understood, is integral to being a Christian.

 As it says of this petition in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘This… is astonishing… according to the second phrase, our petition will not be heard unless we have first met a strict requirement’, that of forgiveness! CCC2938.  We may start with the bold demand to be forgiven, returning to God in each repetition of the Our Father, and, despite our sin ‘like the prodigal son and, like the tax collector, recognis[ing] that we are sinners before him’ CCC2839.  Yet this forgiveness seems to depend upon our own attitude of forgiveness: ‘this outpouring of mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us.’  CCC 2840 This is because of the indivisibility of love in the Body of Christ.  If we cannot love our friends, family, enemies, and acquaintances, whom we do see, ‘we cannot love the God we cannot see.’  Hardness of heart makes us ‘impervious to the Father’s merciful love.’(CCC2840)

Our Lord in many places in the Gospels insists upon forgiveness – the petition is the only one to which He returns explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount, spelling out the condition for forgiveness:  ^‘… if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ (Mt 6:14-15).  This forgiveness has to be at the depth of our hearts:  The command not to kill is to be understood to exclude even anger held in the heart: ‘everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment’ and even to have given cause for such anger without reconciliation stands in the way of righteous prayer: ‘if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.’(Mt.5.23 ff)  This way of loving and forgiving is the path of perfection that makes us ‘sons of God’, like to Him Who ‘makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.’  We are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. (Cf.Mt. 5. 43 ff)

Following Christ demands faith, but equally it demands forgiveness: On the brink of the events of Holy Week Our Lord says: ‘Have faith in God,’ reiterating the power of the prayer of faith to move mountains, but then He adds ‘And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.  But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your trespasses’ Mk. 11. vv. 22; 24-5)  Forgiveness is the fundamental demand of Christian life:  In St John’s Epistle we read: ²⁰ If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.’(l Jn 4:20.)
This is daunting, or even impossible without the help of God.(cf.CCC2841) 

This raises two major questions, why, and how.  Why is our forgiveness of others so integral to a relationship with God?  And given that, how can we forgive when we have been gravely wronged? 

So firstly, why? And the answer is obvious: Because we ourselves have been forgiven: Our Saviour, for our sake ‘though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped’   but emptied Himself, becoming like us in all things but sin, and by dying, rescuing us from the dominion of darkness, bringing into His Kingdom the sheep that had gone astray. 

Our debt in this is incomprehensibly greater than we can pay:  God Who gave us everything that we have and are, every good thing that we have ever known, Who holds us in being for every second of our existence, when we had lost the life of grace through a free act, sent His Son to redeem us, and we killed Him.  God turned the worst thing in the whole of human history into the best thing in the whole of human history.  It is precisely through this divine humility that we are saved: ‘In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace’(Eph.1.7)

The second, co-dependent reason for forgiving is that it integrates us into the love which is the life of grace.  ‘If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit,’ (Gal 5:25) having ‘the mind of Christ’ by participation. (cf.Phil.2.1-6)This entails being ‘kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.’(Eph.4.32)  We are not to imitate the merciless servant in the parable, who, having been forgiven did not himself forgive in his turn.   

St. Thomas likens forgiveness and love of our enemies to the love that we should feel for the unpleasant friends and children of those we love ‘even if they hurt or hate us.’  I had a friend who had a very obnoxious toddler, whom I found it hard to like – but I loved him for her sake, even though he made it clear as only a toddler can that he resented me being with his mother and laying claim to her attention.  In a similar way ‘the friendship of charity extends even to our enemies, whom we love out of charity in relation to God, to Whom the friendship of charity is chiefly directed.’ ST.II-II.Q23.9a2

This brings us to the question, how do we forgive?  First, it is important to understand exactly what is asked of us.  There is an often-repeated phrase that does more harm than good ‘forgive and forget’.  But we cannot forget, or not easily.  What is the process by which we forgive ‘from the heart’?  The first step is to allow ourselves to acknowledge that we have been hurt.  If for example a person who knows us well lies about us, it really hurts.  If one has been abused or abandoned, the injury is as real as an amputated limb.  Pretending that somehow one can forget that a person killed one’s child or chopped off one’s leg is to fly in the face of reason.  The process of forgiving does not at all mean pretending that the hurt did not happen – the insult was given, the abuse occurred, the beloved one has been killed, the leg is still missing.  It happened. This is the truth, which, being recognised, will set us free.

The next step in the process of forgiveness is that we have to acknowledge how we feel – pressing down the anger, shame, horror, or disgust and pretending it is not there is not the path of forgiveness.  Rather we need to acknowledge it, at least to ourselves, and confess our inability on our own to get beyond this, presenting to the Lord all that we feel and suffer because of the offence.

Next, we need to pray for the gift of forgiveness.  If we cannot find it in our hearts to even want to forgive, then we need to pray for the desire itself.  Something like ‘Lord, I do not even want to forgive this person.  Please give me the desire.’

An example of this sort of act of the will is found in Corrie Ten Boom, whose sister had been murdered in Ravensbrück, and who spent the years after the war preaching on reconciliation and forgiveness.  One day she encountered one of the guards from the camp.  ‘“It came back with a rush,” she wrote, “the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the centre of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man.”  He presented himself before her saying ‘A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’ and sought to take her hand, asking for her forgiveness. 

She wrote:  

“I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.”

Standing there before the former S.S. man, Corrie remembered that forgiveness is an act of the will — not an emotion. “Jesus, help me!” she prayed. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”

Corrie thrust out her hand.

‘And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart.”

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then. But even so, I realized it was not my love. I had tried, and did not have the power. It was the power of the Holy Spirit.’

Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh wisely comments: ‘To forgive does not mean to forget: To forgive means with passion and pain in the soul, to say: When the last Judgement comes, I will stand up and say: Do not judge him, Lord.’ 

Our Lord on the Cross did not pretend nothing was happening, but in that moment prayed for the forgiveness of those who were putting Him to death, reviling and mocking Him. ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ (Luke 23.34)

Notice though, that it is an act of the will.  We are soul-body compounds, and our feelings are not always at our command.  We may have to go through the process – acknowledging the hurt and anger, presenting all to the Lord for healing, praying for the will to forgive, and making a formal act of forgiveness – again and again.  A priest who himself had suffered clerical abuse as a child comment on this that the residue of anger is a sign that we still have a work of prayer to do for the person who wronged us.  I found this a remarkable insight, which gives a positive path to follow, rather than having a misplaced sense of guilt because one feels one has failed in the work of forgiveness.  When the angry thought recurs, take a moment to pray for the person.

In forgiving we try to be ‘as’ God is.  We must be ‘perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48), ‘merciful, even as [our] Father is merciful’, (Luke 6.36) and love one another ‘as’ Christ has loved us (cf. Jn.13.34).  This must involve an inner transformation, a ‘vital participation, coming from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God.’ (CCC2842), "forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave" us. (Eph4.32)

We do not have it in our power to stop feeling pain when we are hurt.  However ‘the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.’(CCC2843)  It should help us on the path to forgiveness that the road we must travel is one that Our Lord, Who alone has the power to pour out on us the Holy Spirit of Peace, for the forgiveness of sins, has, in His human nature  travelled ahead of us, the Same One Who on the night He was betrayed ^‘took the cup, and when He had given thanks, gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’ Mt 26:28.

Much of what I have said here is taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s section on prayer, which I recommend to you for spiritual reading.