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The Challenge of Forgiveness

Written by

Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur

in

Each day when we pray the "Our Father," we utter the words "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Think about that for a moment. Do we really want God judging us by the same standard by which we hold others accountable? Ouch! It is easy to give lip service to the idea of forgiveness. It is much harder to actually do it.

People hurt us on an almost daily basis. Some of the slights are small. Someone might cut us off in traffic or be unkind to us in a thoughtless moment. Some wounds are larger. A person purposely hurts us or sets out to spread malicious gossip about us. Some injuries seem truly unforgivable. Someone we love is murdered. Someone abuses our child. A drunk driver hits a car, killing your best friend. A spouse has an affair.

When we need to forgive and are finding it difficult to do so, we can take a lesson from Immaculee Ilibagiza. Immaculee spent ninety-one days hiding in a tiny bathroom with seven other women during the Rwandan Holocaust. She tells her heart-wrenching story in Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (Hay House, 2006) She could hear people being killed outside the door. She spent much of her time in prayer but anger still filled her heart. She wanted the people who were perpetrating these horrific crimes against her people to die.

One night she heard screaming and then a baby crying. The baby's mother had been killed and the baby was left to die in the road. As the baby's cries grew weaker and weaker, she prayed for God to receive the child's innocent soul and then asked Him, "How can I forgive people who would do such a thing to an infant?" She says that she heard an answer: "'You are all my children… and the baby is with Me now.'… It was such a simple sentence, but it was the answer to the prayers I'd been lost in for days."

She began to forgive and that forgiveness allowed her to regain her trust in God. Immaculee continues, "Despite their atrocities, they were children of God… I knew that I couldn't ask God to love me if I were unwilling to love His children." When she was finally able to leave the bathroom and escape to a French military camp, she learned that all of her family had been brutally killed. She later went to a prison to forgive the man who killed her mother and brother.

I can't even imagine that kind of forgiveness and yet that is the kind of forgiveness that God calls us to. Immaculee's story is something to think about the next time we are called to forgive someone who has hurt us.

[Editor's note: Immaculee Ilibagiza will be a featured speaker at the Eucharistic Congress of the Atlanta Archdiocese on Saturday, June 9, 2007. Go here for more information.]

Comments

  1. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    As I struggle with the forgiveness required of me now I take great comfort that the grace of God will be provided for me as it was for Imaculee in her immense forgiveness.  Acutally it make the forgiveness that I need to feel seem rather petty.

  2. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Great story.

    It seems to me that our problems with forgiveness are linked to our problems with understanding what our own sinfulness is. Rather than being a case of broken rules, sin is a broken relationship with the Father, Who is always waiting, ready to forgive us. 

    And when we understand that — really, truly appreciate it — we can more easily, even eagerly, forgive our neighbor.

  3. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Lately I've been thinking a great deal about the flip side … hypocrisy. Our tendency to condemn certain behavior in strangers … but excuse or rationalize faults that are every bit as glaring (self-righteousness comes to mind) in other people, and even in ourselves. I'd like to write about that sometime … but only after it's "baked" a bit longer.

         Thanks for writing this, Patrice. Are you attending the conference?  Heidi

    Heidi Hess Saxton Editor, "Canticle" Magazine Blogroll

  4. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    I felt harrassed by female fellow worker.  She has always appeared to me as a "self-rightious" person, continually mouthing "blessings", yet her behavior towards others has often appeared to me, to be less than Christian.

    Yesterday, I reacted to her "harrassment" by talking to a fellow worker about her and, in my opinion', describing her less than Christian behavior.  Later that night, I realized my own sin, first for judging this woman, second for speaking ill about her.  Even if my assessment of her behavior is true, I had no right to judge or speak ill of her, and so, I ask God to forgive me, and to give me the "love" to never again be judgemental of this person, but to keep her and me in my prayers.

    "Forgiveness", true forgiveness, must come God speaking through us.

  5. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    BlueRidge,

    God bless you. Please realize, even after we are forgiven, there is still the damage done by our sin out there.

    So we also need to go to Confession. There we encounter Christ in a real and special way to express our contrition and receive sacramental grace and penance to know our sins are forgiven.

    And we ought to seek indulgences the Church has in her treasury for the remission from the temporal punishment due to sin, the guilt of which has been forgiven.  This is still the true teaching of the Church.

    PTR!

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