A college professor reported that whenever she asks her undergraduate students what they believe to be the most important part of the Christian message, they unfailingly respond by speaking of forgiveness. Jesus came to bring a message of forgiveness, they say. Some of the more thoughtful students remember to add that he came to teach us how to forgive one another.It appears to be a lesson in tough love. Yet, Jesus wants his students to wake up to the basic reality that divine mercy and human mercy are profoundly interrelated. We acknowledge this every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses even as we forgive those who trespass against us."
We who follow Christ are always being commanded to do things we cannot do. We are commanded to love those who are not loveable. We are called to serve without counting the cost. But the hardest commandment is the commandment to forgive. We are invited to do this, not because it is humanly possible, but because as we try to do what God commands us to do, the ability to do it is given to us by the God of Grace.
A student shared her experience about a dad who abandoned her family: "Even as the vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them, and yet I could do nothing about it. I could not feel even the slightest spark of love or charity. And so I breathed this silent prayer. ‘Jesus, I cannot forgive him, please give me your forgiveness.’" And with that prayer she was able to lift her hand from her side and touch the hand of the man who had abandoned her. "From my shoulder," she writes, "along my arm and through my hand passed a current from me to him, and in that moment I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing depends, the world’s healing depends upon God. When our Lord tells us to love our enemies, he gives us, along with the command to do it, the love itself"
Lord, I prayer for all my Sonshine Friends that you help them realize that forgiveness is not an act of will; it is a function of Your divine grace. And if this morning you are at a point at which you simply cannot forgive, I do know one thing you can do. You can pray that the time will come when you can forgive Even if you cannot pray that prayer, you can be honest before God in confessing that you cannot. May God grant to each of us the grace to allow at least the seed of forgiveness to take root in our hearts. All this comes from God.
