I read that Amazon.com
lists 160,510 books on the topic of forgiveness. That’s 31,629 more than on
sexuality. What does that tell us about the human heart and what it hungers for
most?
You haven’t experienced
freedom unless you have experienced the freedom that comes when you let go of
resentments that sear your soul, preoccupy your thoughts and drain your
strength. Yet, there are so many people who hug their hurts and nurse their
wounds in an all-consuming preoccupation because they cannot “let go.”
When they refuse to
forgive, they choose to be “right” over being free. Catherine Ponder said it
best when she said, “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to
that person by an emotional link
that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link
and get free.”
The biggest mistake people
make when it comes to forgiveness is to believe that it
is a favor one does for the one who has wronged them. It was Suzanne Somers who
said it best when she said, “Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”
Lewis B. Smedes said it
this way: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner
was you.” Alan Paton pointed out, “When deep injury is done us, we never recover
until we forgive.”
Another mistake people
make when it comes to forgiveness is to believe that forgiveness is a sign of
weakness and spine[1]lessness if you don’t
“stand up for yourself.” Actually, as Mohandas Gandhi pointed out, “The weak
can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
The refusal to forgive keeps one imprisoned in
the past. Paul Boese put it this way: “Forgiveness does not change the past,
but it does enlarge the future.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said,
“Without forgiveness, there is no future.” Forgiveness is basically a choice to
have a future over a past.
The biggest obstacle of
all to forgiveness is the belief that the one who wrongs you needs to
apologize, make amends and show evidence of change. While that is certainly
part of justice, it is not essential.
Forgiveness is most
powerful when it is unilateral and unconditional. Unilateral and
unconditional forgiveness is a sign of ultimate strength, because when you
forgive unilaterally, you take charge of your situation and refuse to be
someone else’s victim any longer.
I have been a priest for 43
years. I can honestly say that the most spiritual experience of my life was not
the day I was ordained, not the day I said my first Mass, baptized my first
baby, married my first couple, anointed my own mother before she died or
presided at my first funeral. The most spiritual experience of my life was the
day I decided consciously to forgive and seek forgiveness. I finally realized
that taking offense is just as toxic as giving offense.
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