What struck me most is the reflection on forgiveness ("Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.")
Usually, when people hurt us, what nudges us to forgive are the following:
- if the person apologizes/says sorry
- if he/she seems sincere and remorseful
And the period of granting forgiveness usually depends on the degree of the offense - the more serious it is, the harder and longer one is able to forgive.
In Fr. Martin's book, he cited two amazing and mind-blowing stories of forgiveness.
One is that of a father whose 16-year old son was killed in a car accident because his son's friend, Kenny, was driving the car while he was drunk. During Kenny's trial, this father pleaded to the judge to give Kenny the minimum sentence possible because he said that Kenny never wanted to kill his son. Wow.
When the father was asked why he did what he did, he said "I just did what I thought was right". He also said that he saw Kenny as more than just that one terrible act.
To top it off, both the father and Kenny kept in touch since then, writing to each other for the last 20 years. Imagine, the father didn't just forgive but was able to develop a special friendship with the person who had caused his son's death! Wow.
The second story is about a lawyer named Jeanne whose sister, her sister's husband and their unborn child were killed by someone who was remorseless and never admitted his guilt. Compared to the first story, the death of the victims in this second story was not accidental, but intentional. And to make it worse, there was no remorse from the killer. How can one possibly forgive, right?
Anyway, Jeanne was in mass one day and was so moved when Lamb of God was said, specifically by the words - "You take away the sins of the world". She thought that these words surely don't mean that if someone wrongs us, we should freeze that sin that no matter what the person does, whether he/she repents or not, we should punish the person for the sin forever. So on that day, Jeanne decided to forgive the killer of her sister and family. (Fr Martin also shares what Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, the author of Dead Man Walking, often says about inmates on death row - "People are more than the worst thing they've ever done in their lives.")
Years later, Jeanne realized that she had never told the killer yet that she had forgiven him so she decided to write him a letter. In response, the killer wrote her a letter too. You know what he said? He wrote back - "You're right, I am guilty of killing your sister ... and her husband ... I also want to take this opportunity to express my deepest condolences and apologize to you."
That story gave me goosebumps!
Forgiveness had freed him to be honest and remorseful, Fr Martin points out.
Fr Martin said that forgiveness can free both parties. For the forgiver, it frees him/her from the prison of resentment and from seeing the other as less than human. And for the offending party, he said that we may not know how exactly forgiveness will free him/her and it may be in a way that we will never see, but it will free the other person in some way (like how it has freed Jeanne's killer).
Beautiful stories of extraordinary forgiving capabilities over acts most of us would consider as unforgiveable.
Of course the greatest act of unfathomable forgiveness is that of Jesus on the cross. As Fr Martin points out, if there is anyone who had the right not to forgive, to lash out in anger and feel unjustly persecuted, it was Jesus. Yet, even if the Roman soldiers didn't express remorse in front of Him and continued to mock him, He forgave and prayed for them with His words - "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."
Most of us would probably have thought bubbles like beautiful stories but I'm not a superhuman like Jeanne or the father of Kenny's friend (let's not even go to the level of Jesus' forgiveness! Haha...).
So for starters, I was thinking at the least, what we can try to do is when someone offends us, we don't have to wait for the person to say sorry and show remorse before we forgive.
Fr Martin said that wanting is a good start. He also said that one of the teachings of St. Ignitius of Loyola is even if you don't have the desire to forgive, but have a desire for the desire, God can work with that. Whew! And hopefully, we progress from there. :)
