And Forgive Us Our Trespasses, Part 1

We continue our deep dive into THE HEART OF CATHOLIC PRAYER.

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When asked why he had become a Catholic, G. K. Chesterton famously replied, “To get rid of my sins.”[1] The forgiveness of sins is the awesome gift Christ offers us, a gift so beautiful that words can scarcely express the glory of it. One of the most lovely things you can possibly experience is going to the Easter Vigil and watching the sheer joy of the newly baptized when, among the many other miracles that occur on that wonderful night, they emerge from the waters as new creations whose sins God will remember no more. It is a miracle so profound that fairy tales strain to capture the heart-breaking beauty of it with myths of the fountain of youth. Likewise, tragic stories communicate to us the dark side of the refusal of the gift with bitterly sad stories of people who, in their headstrong folly, get what they want only to lose the love of their life forever.

That God himself gives us the petition “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” ought to startle us. After all, it places us in the odd position of the student studying for the finals who is handed a folder with all the answers by the teacher himself. It’s like going to court on a murder charge, having the defense counsel coach us on how to get a favorable verdict from the Judge and then having the defense counsel don robes and ascend the bench to hear your plea. It throws the whole picture of God as Judge into a very odd light. Forgiveness is ours for the asking, saith the Lord. Just ask for it!

However, “asking for forgiveness” means we must really mean it. And the test of whether we mean it is bound up, as the Catechism says, with that pesky little word “as”:

Now—and this is daunting—this outpouring of mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us. Love, like the Body of Christ, is indivisible; we cannot love the God we cannot see if we do not love the brother or sister we do see (cf. 1 John 4:20). In refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters, our hearts are closed and their hardness makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love; but in confessing our sins, our hearts are opened to his grace. (CCC 2840)

In short, once again, the Lord’s Prayer is absolutely predicated on the fact that Christ’s revelation is corporate and communal, not individualistic. Just as we pray Our Father, not My Father and pray “give us this day our daily bread,” so we also pray “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” not “Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who sin against me.”

The implications of this are enormous and account for why it has long been my conviction that the single most scandalous doctrine in Christian teaching is to be found right here—in the demand to forgive absolutely everybody for absolutely every sin they have committed against us.

Jesus seems to have anticipated something of the same thing given that, of all the commentary he might have offered on the Our Father, the sole clause he focuses on is this one, precisely in order to hammer home how crucial is the command to forgive others if we expect to have any hope of forgiveness for ourselves. In Matthew, he tells us, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).

In Mark 11:25, he offers us even less wiggle room:

“And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

In short, Christ’s test of whether we are really serious when we ask forgiveness for ourselves is whether we are really willing to extend it to others, regardless of whether they want it. This is a colossally hard saying, so over the centuries we Christians have developed an impressive repertoire of strategies for avoiding, minimizing, evading, and explaining it away. Among them are the following:

• Call “excusing” the same thing as “forgiving” and pat yourself on the back for it as the summit of Christian virtue. Now excusing wrongs done you is a fine thing and should be our first resort in treating others charitably. To paraphrase Mark Twain, never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity (or some other less culpable cause like ignorance, clumsiness, or bad luck). When somebody steps on your toe accidentally, you are quite right to excuse them for it. They meant you no harm. But of course, as Jesus notes, even tax collectors and sinners can muster that much mercy. It’s the emotional equivalent of loaning and receiving back a couple of bucks for a cup of coffee. No actual forgiveness is taking place, merely simple justice. Until the excuses for offenses are exhausted, we haven’t even begun the work of forgiveness. Because forgiveness is for sins—low-down, dirty, mean, intentional, nasty sins—not for mistakes. If you “forgive” somebody who steps on your toe accidentally, but not the SOB who stomps on it on purpose, you haven’t forgiven at all.

• Put a limit on the severity of the sin, as in “I can forgive a little shoplifting. I was young once too. But I draw the line at out-and-out theft!” or “Every man has a wandering eye, but when a husband commits adultery, he commits the unforgivable!” The problem with this is that the measure you use will be measured to you. If you won’t forgive mortal sin in others don’t expect any mercy for your own.

• Put a number limit on forgiveness, like “three strikes and you’re out.” Our Lord’s remarks on forgiveness “seven times seventy times” (cf. Matthew 18:22) are the obvious rejoinder here. If you’ve sinned more than three times yourself, it’s highly advisable you extend the same mercy to others.

• Call forgiveness “cheap grace.” This is the notion that if you don’t go on hating that gal who ghosted you, if you don’t keep repeating to yourself every day the litany of wrongs your mother-in-law has done you, if you don’t cling to bitterness over that jerk who took your job, then your enemy will have gotten away with it! The thought, “I must not let them off the hook!” sums this up. But forgiveness does not equal passivity in the face of evil. It means releasing the evildoer into the hands of God’s mercy even as you finger him to the cops for his crime. A rape victim, for example, has the right and duty to see to it that her attacker goes to jail with the help of her testimony. She likewise has the right and duty to forgive that attacker, precisely so that he does not retain power over her for the rest of her life by robbing her of her happiness and forcing her, for years, to live in one awful moment.

Related to this is another false notion arising from bad understandings of forgiveness–of which more next time.

[1] G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography (Kent, England: Fisher Press, 1992), p. 340.