By Fr Niall O’Brien

More than thirty years ago when I arrived first in the Philippines and was learning the language in Kabankalan I was called out one night on a sick call. A young man had been stabbed. I can’t remember now what I did. I suppose I anointed him. But I do remember that as soon as it was clear that he was dead, his brother cried out to the heavens with a terrifying voice swearing that he would have revenge. I was profoundly shocked. Maybe I wouldn’t have been if I had known a little more about my own ancient Celtic heritage. Now I know that in the pre-Christian Irish tradition and even many years after St. Patrick Christianized Ireland, revenge was considered almost a sacred obligation.

Photo: Benjo Rulona

Though many teachings of the Church cause me problems, I have never had any difficulty in seeing that forgiving one’s enemies is an absolute essential, a non-negotiable for being a disciple of Jesus. And if forgiving is a non-negotiable for a Christian, how much more so is putting aside revenge?

Though many of Jesus’ words can be interpreted this way or that and some of His statements are downright enigmatic, his teaching on forgiveness is consistent, continuous and as clear as the moon on a cloudless night: if you do not forgive your brother from your heart, my Heavenly Father will not forgive you.

Repentance is not enough

I started all this because of a little piece I had been reading recently from the late Anthony de Mello’s book entitled Contact with God, Retreat Conferences. You know the way it happens that you read something – maybe something you have already believed anyway – but the author has a way of stating it that drives the truth home with new force. Well this article had that effect on me. The article is called the Dangers of Repentance. De Mello was talking about the difficulty we sometimes have in believing that we have been forgiven.

Have you noticed that nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus tell us that in order to get forgiveness for our sins we must be sorry? He is not, obviously, excluding sorrow for sin. He just doesn’t explicitly demand it. Whereas we have made such a fuss about contrition; and how many penitents I have had who were bothered to distraction about whether they had sufficient contrition, whether their contrition was ‘perfect’ or ‘imperfect’ and such other largely irrelevant questions as far as forgiveness is concerned. And while we got lost in what Jesus did not explicitly demand of us, we conveniently overlooked the things that He explicitly and insistently demanded. He said, “If you want forgiveness from my heavenly Father, then you must forgive your brother.” That one condition was conspicuously absent from the conditions for a ‘good confession’ that were listed in our old catechism books. We were quite meticulous about examining our consciences and telling our sins to the priest and making an act of contrition and a purpose of amendment and fulfilling the penance given us. We were not explicitly told that more important by far than all of these, was that we forgive our brother any wrong he has done us; indeed, that if this were missing, our sins were simply not forgiven, no matter how perfect our contrition or how accurate our recital of our sins to the priest in the confessional.

First step to reconciliation

So we are back to square one. Forgiving those who have offended us. By the way, forgiving them does not necessarily mean becoming friends with them. That’s ‘reconciliation’ and that’s another day’s work. After all it only takes one to forgive but it takes two to reconcile. You can forgive someone but you can’t force reconciliation upon them or yourself. Forgiving is an act but reconciliation is a process and sometimes a long process. In this article I am talking not about reconciliation but about forgiveness which in its own way is a first step towards reconciliation.

Only by Grace

I think sometimes we enjoy not forgiving. We get some strange comfort in harboring the memory of an evil done to us or possibly to our family. We nourish that memory to keep it warm. Sometimes it becomes very hard to let go of that memory. We even feel that we are being unfaithful to our family if we “forgive” someone who did something evil to them. Surely it was this idea of being faithful to his dead brother that made that young man cry out his promise of revenge. What I am saying is that forgiveness does not come easily. In fact it’s a grace – a grace we need to pray for. So please do pray for it. In fact the Lord very nicely slipped it into the “Our Father” so that it will become a permanent part of our daily prayer: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. He knew we would find it difficult.

Blessed are the injured

I doubt if there is even one person reading this who has not been injured by someone else. Maybe you are saying to yourself, “But this person really did this evil deed and they really intended to do it. They did it with malice.” But that’s the point. It is precisely because they intended to do it and did it with malice that you have something to forgive. The strange irony is that they have put you and me in the way of gaining a grace. If they had not hurt us, we would not now have the opportunity of forgiving.

I often heard it said, “Ako ang mas matanda. Siya ang mas bata. Siya dapat ang maunang humingi ng tawad.” (S/he is younger than I am. S/he should make the first move.) I don’t think that is correct. I think the one who can make the first move is precisely the one who was injured. Only the injured one can forgive.

The twentieth century has been a century of great pain and sadness. The figure given for those killed in war that century is 160 million. Can you imagine what pain and hurt and unforgiveness lie behind all of that? My own little theory is that when we forgive, we not only lift a burden from our own heart but in some way we lift a burden from the earth, from the human race and make the world a lighter place to live in.

In his dying moments Jesus managed to gasp out the words, “Father, forgive them.” He had already forgiven them in His heart but He wanted us to know it and imitate Him.