Breathes there a Christian who has not encountered the stumbling block of forgiveness? The lack of it, I mean. First, some delineation is necessary. I’m not talking about huge collective sins like, say, World War II, nor am I talking about the minor irritants or disappointments in some acquaintance or other. No. Somebody close. Something personal.
Somebody betrays your trust, personally. They said or did something that hurt you to the core. The marriage/friendship/relationship is broken and you go your separate ways. Life goes on, and you try not to think about it—because it causes you pain, or it makes you angry (though you know the anger is really just an expression of your pain.) Days, weeks, months, go by. If the relationship is particularly close (spouse, sibling, parent), even years go by. And there is still pain.
You realize you have to forgive them. Not for the sake of the relationship. That’s shattered. But for your own sake. You just need to stop the pain, and you know that forgiveness is the only way. Okay. How? The difficulty of forgiving is a matter of degree.
1. Easy: They apologize. Is the apology sincere? Are they really contrite? Do they acknowledge their guilt and promise never to do it again? If so, forgiving is easy. You accept the apology but you keep your distance if you’re intelligent. Betrayers of trust are usually serial (though not always), and if they’re truly contrite, maybe they’ve learned from the experience. When we apologize to God during Confession—and we’re sincere—this is the way we usually do it. God accepts our apology, and we forgive others as he has forgiven us.
2. Not so easy: They apologize but they condition it. They say, “I’m sorry IF I hurt you,” or “I’m sorry IF I said or did something to offend you.” This is not sincere because there’s no acknowledgement of guilt here. It’s hypocritical. Worse than that, they force you to accept an apology you know to be insincere. You have to accept it because you can’t refuse to forgive somebody without incurring sin yourself. So you accept the apology with equal insincerity so the ordeal can be “officially” over. Nothing is mended here. Not your pain or anger nor their soul—which, in the absence of true repentance, is stained. The injury here is actually compounded because they’ve put you in the position of having to accept the false apology, thereby making you as hypocritical as they are. To go to Confession with such an apology is sacrilege.
3. Difficult: They turn it on you. The destruction of the relationship is made to be your fault. This is the usual choice of those who habitually displace responsibility. When confronted, they say things like: “Well, you’re the one who’s angry, not me” (not even minima culpa here). Of course they’re not angry; they’re not the one who’s been hurt. You want to forgive but they make it impossible this way. They
put you into a dilemma. If you walk away, you’re the one to blame; if you resume the relationship without an apology from them, you accept responsibility for their misdeeds. The injury they’ve done you is swept under the rug, ignored. And you resume the relationship, even though it now has the shape of a cruciform. This is the kind of misdeed that never even makes it to Confession. Without radical transformation in the wrongdoer, it will eventually lead to–
4. The most difficult degree of all: This forgiveness includes the difficult degree just described, but it goes further. It faces a brick wall of utter denial. You are hurt, but, because they intended you no harm, they assert that no harm was done. You have no right to be hurt. And worse than the original injury is this additional one: The injury was done out of their indifference. Your injury is irrelevant because YOU are irrelevant. Once they “prove” their innocence through denying any harm, their interest in the matter is spent.
This is shocking, even astonishing. Someone steps on a child’s kitten and then says, “Well, I didn’t know it was there,” and immediately forgets both what he did and the child. He acknowledges nothing. He had no intention of harm—because he didn’t care enough to notice in the first place. Ergo, he’s guilty of nothing.
Anyone who’s ever been confronted with this last degree of difficulty in forgiving will know just how frustrating it can be. It’s the kind that most often causes in us frail mortals a real and sustained anger. I remember reading somewhere that even Pope Benedict once said that while we’re all required to forgive even the most grievous hurt, in the absence of repentance, it’s impossible. I would add that the absence even of acknowledgement is still worse. But worst of all is this indifference in the place where that acknowledgement should be.
BUT there is a way and it’s in one half of a sentence, one dependent clause: “…for they know not what they do.”
Try it. It works. Ruminate on it. Digest it. They’re astonishingly insensitive, amazingly ignorant, simply void of any empathic capability. We like to believe that when our Lord hung on the Cross where our sins put him, he forgave us out of love. But maybe it was simple pity. Maybe it was because he could see just how monstrously deformed we are.
Dena, this is quite profound and well written. I have just submitted a post on Reconciliation which is on these same issues. It is easy to reflect upon such things in Holy Week, when Our Lord suffered so many wrongs, the betrayal of friends being perhaps the worst.
Contrition, to be true, must seek a restoration of a lost order, a damaged relationship – and not just for selfish reasons. This is a fact in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in our daily dealings with friends.
Thus, we can always offer the kind of forgiveness that says, “I will not seek to get even with you, nor will I ruminate on the harm you caused, since, even if intentional, you ‘know not what you do’.” But the deeper forgiveness, which involves a repair, a reconciliation, a renewed full communion – that can not be offered without sincere contrition on the part of the penitent – either in a friendship or in the Church. Thus, the great sad irony that so many Christians remain unforgiven, not out of a lack of God’s grace, which is infinite, but out of their own desire to prefer a private hell over full communion with His heaven.
Your last paragraph particularly deserves reply: The “deeper forgiveness” would have to awaken in the penitent the discomfort of guilt and shame. That is why the would-be penitent avoids it with the conditional apology (I’m sorry IF I…). The penitent seeks restoration of the relationship without it. Yet any relationship based on trust requires it; only the most superficial relationship can do without it–even then, it would be difficult.
The injured party knows the true nature of the relationship when sincere contrition (acknowledgement of guilt and expression of sorrow) is absent. That absence reveals indifference toward the injured party–that’s the most painful element of the injury. No forgiveness is possible then EXCEPT the kind of comes from the Cross. It is the last resort of anyone who wants to forgive but whose forgiveness is blocked by the absence of contrition.
It makes me wonder if the pain of Purgatory consists of accumulated unacknowledged guilt that must be experienced fully before forgiveness is possible.