It should frighten any of us that our Lord would remember our sins in detail and hold us accountable at that level. Yet that is precisely what we hear in our reading from Sirach. If we do not forgive others and continue to ruminate and ponder in detail all that has been done to offend us, so will the Lord remember and hold accountable our own sins in as much detail. I don’t know about you, but that is not something I want, and it makes me shudder to think about all those things coming back to haunt me.
Yet sometimes it can seem incredibly difficult to let go of these things. I think perhaps that is because we approach the process with an incorrect understanding of what it means to forgive. We may think that this means we will put all of the things that have been done to us aside and we won’t even remember them anymore. Yet, this is not usually the case. The human person is a funny thing, we often can’t recall what we ate for supper the previous day, but we can reach back years and recall some slight or offense, so the notion that we will simply forget these things is not going to fly. However, that is not what we are after, in forgiving others we are instead seeking to not continue to hold anger, resentment, and malice toward them – these things simply give power to past memories and the evil one who wants us to still live in that past rather than looking to the brightness of the future which our Lord has in store for us. Instead, we hope that God will touch them in some way that is beneficial to their own well-being. We consciously release them from our own grasp that seeks retribution, and instead look to God for the peace that comes when we are freed from a heavy burden and can then walk lightly and unencumbered. This is not always easy and will require prayer for the grace to do this, just as we pray for the grace to be released from our own sins. If we truly approach our forgiveness of others with the understanding that the resentment and anger that we hold is really only harming us, both within ourselves, but also with our relationship with God, we will realize the cost is not worth it.
Even when others have harmed us repeatedly, we are called to forgive. This does not mean that we keep going back and expecting they will treat us differently. We are called to be prudent and to avoid such situations, until such time as we see that Gods grace has taken hold of them and produced a change of heart. Yet, we are still called to forgive, no matter how many times they have transgressed. We pray for them and ask that they be touched with Gods grace and truly change – we show pity for them that they are in such a wretched state.
There is no getting around this call to forgive. As followers of Christ, we are called to do this because in doing so we fulfill the two greatest commandments – to love others, and in doing so to love our Lord because all others were created in His image, even those we find the most difficult to reconcile with.
The Deacons Bench 