SEEKING MERCY, EMBRACING FORGIVENESS
Seeking God’s mercy for myself or others feels natural. It is easy to pray for family and friends who are ill or in need asking God to heal them or spare them pain. It is easy to ask God’s mercy on people living amid war. It is easy to gather a list and present it to God using words from the first reading of the day, “… deal with us in your kindness and great mercy. Deliver us by your wonders…”.
I trust that God hears my pleas for mercy.
What is not easy is what Jesus calls for in today’s gospel: To forgive those who have treated me unjustly, with malice or dismissal, not seven times as Peter suggests, but seventy-seven times. Why am I called to forgive a family member who has hurt me? Why do I have to forgive a colleague who dismisses my work? Why do any of us have to forgive an abusive spouse, a nasty neighbor, or in the worst cases, someone who has injured or killed a loved one?
Jesus offers the ultimate example when he says, “Father, forgive them,” as he was dying. If I am to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, then I am called to embrace forgiving.
I have come to understand that sometimes seventy-seven times is not enough times to forgive someone who has hurt you. Occasionally, when the pain has subsided and I can honestly say I have forgiven someone there is an unexpected moment when the forgiveness falls flat and the pain, even distant pain from the past, pops up and the process begins again.
Forgiving another requires a decision to forgive, to let go, to ask for God’s grace to see the person who has hurt you as a child of God. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it to embrace forgiveness, sometimes over and over? Absolutely.
Some things I have learned about forgiving: It can be messy and heart-wrenching, it is a choice that is not always reciprocated, it takes time, not forgiving is to continue to be a victim of the person who hurt you, and forgiveness does not have to be communicated to the one who hurt you, it can be a solitary exercise. Finally, I have learned that forgiveness is a gift from God and to myself.
May God grant each of us the grace to embrace the forgiveness modeled by Jesus and to do it with intention this Lent.
Anne Hansen