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Years ago, someone I once knew suffered a loss in her life. I reached out and tried to comfort her as best I could, but, if I am being honest, I did not feel compassion for her. At least, not the level of compassion that comes from the heart, the kind in which the suffering of the other is unceasingly on one’s mind and prayers, as if planted there by the Holy Spirit. Whatever compassion I felt for this person was but a drop compared to the compassion that I lacked. And I couldn’t figure out why.
Normally, suffering elicits in us a greater capacity to love, enough so that our petty concerns and differences shrink down to size. Why, in this case, did this not take place in me? The truth is, this person had hurt me in the past, and although I could say I had sincerely forgiven her, I still had not “let go.” I had to learn the difference between forgiveness and letting go.
Forgiveness is the act of the will we make, regardless of our feelings, that we are going to love the person who has hurt us—a free-will choice. We make the decision that we are going to want what is best for them, even when our attempts at love feel a little sterile, robotic, or insincere. Just because we don’t “feel” loving, does not make our acts of love insincere. It just makes such acts really hard to carry out.
Letting go is another matter entirely. When we don’t let go of our grievances with others, we do not accept them as they are. We remained shocked and scandalized by behaviors that they have “always” displayed, as if we should expect their involuntary personality flaws to change, simply because these flaws irritate and provoke us. It is normal and even understandable to be disturbed by objectively irritating, inappropriate, and sometimes harmful behavior. But if we do not accept others as they are, then the problem lies with us, not them: the one whose heart needs changing most is our own. It is our unconditional acceptance of others, exactly as they are, that will enable us to love them as Christ loves us all.
To accept others exactly as they are does not mean to condone or encourage immoral or harmful behavior. It simply means that we do not define a person by the sins and temptations they struggle with now. We see in others the saint they have the potential to become; we are rooting for them! Eternally speaking, we are on their side . . . even if right now they are not on ours.
In order to cultivate the kind of faith that enables us to be animated by the Spirit and not ourselves, we must learn to love as an act of the will. In other words, we must learn to forgive when we don’t feel like forgiving, and we must learn to show mercy when we don’t feel like showing mercy. We must learn to love the ones we do not like, as they are. There is no other way to grow in holiness and cultivate our faith.
This is why reproaching ourselves for not liking people whom we “should” is both illogical and a waste of time: God sent them to us so that we might have the opportunity to practice many acts of love with our will, and not our feelings. It is a good thing, even though it doesn’t “feel” good. Doing the thing we don’t feel like doing, not because it is what we want but because it is what God wants, is precisely what it means to cultivate our faith.
Finally, if we have tried to accept others as they are but seem to repeatedly fail, let’s understand that letting go takes grace. It is a movement of love propelled by the Holy Spirit that makes our efforts at acceptance come to fruition. To let go of resentment, after all, is not something that we are capable of doing on our own. How does one make oneself not feel what one is feeling? One cannot . . . but God can. So while we cannot force grace into our lives, we can place ourselves in a disposition to receive it. It all begins with prayer, begging the Lord for the graces we need, and then making our efforts through acts of the will to cooperate with that grace.
I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling. – Corrie ten Boom
When the grace of letting go will come, we do not know. For some, it is not until our offender has reached the final months, weeks, or even days of his life, despite our having prayed and persevered in trying for decades. For others, perhaps it is not until the offended has reached his final days.
Why would God leave us to such a cruel fate? Why not answer our prayers for grace right away?
The truth is, in God’s omniscient wisdom, He already has. It could very well be that our humble acceptance of our weakness and struggle is the very means by which Jesus saves our offender’s soul. The poking and prodding with which they disturb us is our reminder to offer continual prayers that God might pour out His grace upon our difficult circumstance. If we could see our trial from the perspective of eternity, we would realize that, as it turns out, we may have been the only true friend to that person. Eternally speaking, perhaps the best friend they ever had—not despite our feelings, but precisely because of them.
Author’s Note: Excerpt from: The Safe Haven: Scriptural Reflections for the Heart and Home (Ordinary Time Weeks 22-28). To purchase, visit Amazon or The Catholic Company, where all other volumes currently in print are also available.
Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash
