Love and Forgiveness

As we are moving forward in this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, I want to offer a few words on a kind of mercy that can at times be difficult for us to share with others.

“[Jesus said,] 'This is how you are to pray: 
        Our Father in heaven,

        hallowed be your name,

        your kingdom come,

        your will be done,

        on earth as in heaven.

        Give us today our daily bread;

        and forgive us our debts,

        as we forgive our debtors;

        and do not subject us to the final test,

        but deliver us from the evil one.'"

        (Matthew 6:9-13)

In this narrative of the Gospel, Jesus has just taught his disciples the prayer we know today as the Our Father.  We’ve all heard it and prayed it from our earliest days as Christians, whether we were born into the Church or joined as adults.  But before we say the words, do we really know what we are saying?  Do we really understand what we are praying?

In particular, I invite you to reflect with me on one part of this prayer that is, most often, the most difficult to apply to our daily lives.  You may already guess which part that is: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  Most of us have learned this part as “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”.  But the message is the same. 

Let’s go back to the line about debts and debtors.  What is a debt?  Something you owe to someone.  What is a debtor?  Someone who owes something to you.  So what is Jesus saying with this part of the prayer?  Hidden within that line, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”, is a clear command: as God has forgiven us for those times we come up short, we in turn are to open up that account book in our souls, find the page where it says someone owes us an apology or recompense for something they did wrong – or something good that they should have done and didn’t – and write off the debt.  Easy, right?

No, of course it’s not always easy.  More often, it’s easier just to stay angry and hold a grudge, especially when someone hurts you deeply and leaves wounds that don’t heal overnight.  It’s easy enough to say the words: “It’s okay.”  “I forgive you.”  But if it doesn’t come from the will and the heart, the words are just a bandage over a wound that goes deeper than just a scrape on the surface.  Holding a grudge doesn’t do anything except poison that wound and make it worse.  Eventually that poison just spreads, until it eats away at your heart and soul.  Those kinds of wounds can’t heal – won’t heal – until you find peace.  Peace comes by forgiving, and forgiving comes by prayer.

Jesus knows how weak we are, and how difficult it can be to swallow our pride and forgive someone.  On our own will and strength, we can do nothing.  But with him, we can do anything.  He forgave the very people who persecuted him and left him to die on a cross, and he forgave the friends who abandoned him.  If we ask him to help us forgive the ones who hurt us, he will.

St. John Paul the Great once said, “The worst prison would be a closed heart.”  God in His mercy wants to free us from the prisons that we make for ourselves.  The moment we offer forgiveness to someone who has hurt us, is the first step outside the prison bars.  When we open our hearts and offer that mercy to others, we’ll find it coming back to us.

"All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice.  [And] be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ."  (Ephesians 4:31-32)

In this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, let’s all of us do something extraordinary, something the world might – and usually does – think we’re crazy to do, especially when the wrongdoing seems unforgivable: let us forgive.  Set free the prisoners that we’ve trapped with our pride and bitterness, and we’ll find ourselves free along with them.

As a final thought, I leave you with a verse from a song by Matthew West, who had this to say about forgiveness:

"It’ll clear the bitterness away, it can even set a prisoner free

There is no end to what its power can do

So let it go and be amazed by what you see through eyes of grace

The prisoner that it really frees is you”