Last month, on the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Catholics heard the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. This is the story of the man in great debt who begged for patience from his master before failing to forgive a much smaller debt owed to himself. We were reminded to not only forgive seven times, but seventy-seven times. In our respective parishes, we may have also heard various adages such as “not forgiving is like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt the other person” or that “God has forgiven us for worse sins,” etc. We may have been told, in line with the Gospel, that we should forgive generously—isn’t it good for us?
All of this is good, true, and right. However, walking away from such messages can still be unsatisfying. While I have not personally endured a grave offense against myself or my family (murder, rape, serious theft, etc.), I can only imagine the difficulty of forgiveness for those who have, despite the truth of Jesus’ parable. Jesus was clear on the necessity of our forgiveness of others—so what holds us back?
There are two corollaries of thoughts which can trip us up, despite our desire to follow Jesus’ command. The first is a deep sense that anger is justified and that a priest (or Jesus Himself) asking us to let it go seems unjust and unfairly downplays the offense. The second is a sense that God seems to be unfair towards us as Christians. For example, if I steal, I’m called to bear the burden of reflecting on the damage and pain my action caused, making restitution, and seeking forgiveness with a firm purpose of amending my life. However, if someone steals from me, it seems I’m called to bear the burden of forgiving from the heart, downplaying the injury, and moving on. In both cases, the Christian person is the one who bears the burden.
I will deal with these two thought patterns in turn.
Feeling Just Anger and Still Choosing Mercy
First, some of us may struggle to forgive due to a deep, nagging sense that our anger is justified and that to forgive would be to let the one who offended us “off the hook.” This may be especially true for those who have suffered serious injuries. For those who feel this way, there is something correct about the inclination to be angry. Anger is justified, and we are not called to dismiss it, but, rather, to properly place it.
The best model to help deal with this feeling was illustrated by G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy. In it, Chesterton outlines that the job of the Christian is not to ignore the gravity of the offense, but rather, to split the sin itself from the sinner who offended us. Christ is not asking us to think of the theft as “no big deal.” Rather, we are called to have a stronger hatred for the theft while simultaneously having a stronger mercy for the thief.
We should have an intense anger and hatred for sin in any direction in which it moves, whether it be an offense toward us or a sin that comes from us. Any sin causes damage and takes away from the happiness we are meant to enjoy. Downplaying sin is dangerous due to the damages that sin can cause. Thus, we hate the sin.
However, Jesus asks us to turn around and show mercy toward the sinner. In other words, we’re called to love our enemies (Mt. 5:43-48) or bear wrongs patiently (a spiritual work of mercy). Notice, though, that we are still allowed to call someone an “enemy” and still label an action as a “wrong.” In this way, the harm of the offense isn’t blindly dismissed. However, through this, we are called to act mercifully. I’ve personally found that if I allow myself to feel anger toward the sin it is easier to look with mercy on the sinner.
Addressing the Burden of Forgiveness
This segues into the second point, which is that God seems to unfairly place the burden of both contrition and forgiveness on the Christian person. Considering the previous point, a justified, general hatred of sin is always required, either toward us or coming from us. However, if we reflect that a sin has come from us, then it’s reasonable to assume the burden of and responsibility to make restitution, seek appropriate forgiveness based on the sin’s severity, and have a firm purpose of avoiding the sin in the future. Whether others do the same for their sins is beyond our control and shouldn’t factor into how we approach our own repentance.
However, it can be difficult to go through that process ourselves and then be asked to forgive someone who has not apologized nor expressed remorse. For these instances, it’s important to reframe forgiveness not as a bland dismissal of the offense, but, rather, our willingness to let God collect the debt due to us.
In the Bible, the phrase “vengeance is Mine” appears three times, referring to God’s dominion over justice and punishment (Dt. 32:35; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30). By forgiving, we remove ourselves as the debt collector and trust in Jesus to set things right, at the time, place, and manner of His choosing. This can be difficult, because our perception of the offense may lead us to doubt that God will punish properly or adequately. However, the Christian person is called to trust that God, who hates all sin and has banned it from His Heaven, will deal with it better than we could ourselves.
Those who are parents understand the phenomena at play—how often do children misunderstand injuries? Any parent would laugh at the notion that children themselves could judge injuries correctly and then issue punishments appropriately, which is why parents, from a higher perspective, are called to this task. Christians are called to do the same—by willfully handing over punishment duties to Christ, it frees the Christian and ensures the proper dealing of the sin in question.
Further, how often do we misunderstand an action, get angry, act sinfully on that anger, only to realize that we were wrong and had misunderstood what happened? When this occurs, we often are left feeling terrible and wishing we had acted more prudently. Letting Christ deal with the offense frees us from this trap as well.
Stepping into Forgiveness and Freedom
It can be easy to misunderstand the call to forgiveness as a call to dismiss offenses as “no big deal” or as a call to “just get over it.” However, our call is to understand how anger and mercy should be placed in a way that allows the Christian to forgive from the heart without dismissing the severity of the offense or the proper anger due toward the sin. For those struggling to forgive, my hope is that reframing forgiveness in this way may allow you to take that first step towards forgiveness, and, consequently, freedom.
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
