We continue our deep dive into THE HEART OF CATHOLIC PRAYER.
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Another false notion arising from bad understandings of forgiveness is the idea that stewing in rage is tantamount to “doing something about sin.” I remember a woman I knew, incensed by the priest abuse scandal, who told me, “Love does not permit continued sin. I do not love an abusing priest or an enabling bishop by telling him ‘That’s ok, I forgive you and God will forgive you’ when there is no reason to suspect they will repent and sin no more. They have demonstrated that they will do it again, if I let them off the hook.”
The problem is that my friend, who did not know and was not in contact with any abusive priests herself was living in a complete fantasy world, imagining that cursing at a computer screen or TV would somehow affect the actions of bad bishops, abusive clergy, police, prosecutors, and so forth on the opposite side of the country. But of course, somebody swearing at their TV in Ohio over some sin committed by a priest in Boston is going to do absolutely nothing except corrode her own soul. Her refusal to let go of rage did not Teach Somebody a Lesson, chasten a bad cleric, help the cops do their job, or comfort a victim. It just ate away at her own heart.
Related to this is another argument that “Forgiveness cannot take place until we know the extent of what must be forgiven.” The claim here is that if a sinner continues to sin, we don’t have to forgive them, since we allegedly can’t forgive what they have not yet done or what is not yet known to have been done.
This not only means that no sinner can ever be forgiven for anything ever (since we are all liable to sin up to the moment we die), but it is exactly backward from Christ’s approach. He does not wait until our lives our over to decide whether or not he loves us. “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He commands us to do the same. That is what “love your enemies” means (cf. Matthew 5:44). “Forgive, if you have anything against any one” doesn’t mean “Love people who pay back your emotional bank account by saying they are sorry and assuaging your rage.” It means “extend unconditional love and forgiveness to nasty people who despise you and want to harm you. Desire their happiness. Do not cultivate bitterness against them. Fight their evil actions, where necessary and possible, but do not will them ill.”
Still another common strategy for avoiding forgiveness is to say, “God does not forgive impenitent sinners. Why should we be held to a higher standard than that to which God holds himself?” This sounds good, but it all hinges on what we mean by a “higher” standard. Obviously, no standard is “higher” than God’s own standard in the sense of “better” or “more perfect.” But if by “higher,” you really mean “stricter” then there is a very sufficient answer to this question: “Because we’re not God.”
The sleight of hand at work here is the notion that God would never forbid us something he doesn’t forbid himself. This is nonsense. We are commanded “Judge not” by the Judge of the whole world. Why? Because we are not qualified to judge anybody and he is qualified to judge everybody for the very good reason that he knows the heart and we do not. In other words, it is precisely because we are not God that we are commanded to forgive.
Still another excuse for refusing forgiveness goes this way: “The command to forgive is not unconditioned, because if it were, a priest could not refuse absolution. Since, in some cases, the priest is supposed to refuse absolution, so can we refuse to forgive.” This is, however, to confuse sacramental confession with the common Christian demand for forgiveness. Like it or not, the command “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one” (Mark 11:25) is unconditioned, just as the command to love our enemies is. And it is coupled with the equally unconditional (and dire) assurance “if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Pastors with a responsibility to govern the Church are given latitude by our Lord to exercise discretion in the dispensation of sacramental absolution (“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 21:23)) precisely because they act in persona Christi and we laity do not. This is why the Catechism is really quite blunt:
Christian prayer extends to the forgiveness of enemies (cf. Matthew 5:43-44), transfiguring the disciple by configuring him to his Master. Forgiveness is a high point of Christian prayer; only hearts attuned to God’s compassion can receive the gift of prayer. Forgiveness also bears witness that, in our world, love is stronger than sin. The martyrs of yesterday and today bear this witness to Jesus. Forgiveness is the fundamental condition of the reconciliation of the children of God with their Father and of men with one another (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21).[1] (CCC 2844)
Enemies are not tearful penitents like the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, or the sheepish Thomas saying “My Lord and My God” (John 20:28), or the prodigal son or any of those gratifying sorts of people who make us feel so grandly magnanimous when they come crawling back to us saying, “I was sooooo wrong and you were sooooo right! Please forgive me!” Enemies are people who hurt us, who mean to go on hurting us, and who have not the slightest intention of saying, “I’m sorry.” It is these people Jesus commands us to love and, as a corollary, it is these people to whom we are commanded to extend forgiveness.
Realizing this shocking truth, yet another escape route we sometimes explore is this: “I can forgive evils done against me personally, but I don’t have to forgive, say, the 9/11 conspirators because they did not affect me personally.”
The trick behind this evasion is to allow yourself to identify with the victims of a sin enough to hate their enemies, but to pretend that this act of identification does not likewise oblige you to forgive their enemies as it obliges them (assuming, of course, that they are disciples of Jesus). Basic rule of thumb—if a sin done to a stranger arouses pity for the stranger and loathing for the one who committed the sin, then to that degree you are bound to forgive it as if it were done to you.
“But,” we splutter desperately, “Do you really think, for example, that Osama bin Laden was owed forgiveness?”
No. Nobody is owed forgiveness. Unconditional love is, by definition, undeserved. Grace is grace, not something we deserve.
So, sooner or later, we return to the granite fact that we are solemnly commanded by Jesus Christ himself to extend forgiveness to absolutely everybody who sins against us, whether they ever repent or not. It is the hardest thing Jesus commands. Nothing comes close.
[1] John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia 14
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