Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.— Luke 23:34 (King James Version)
How is forgiveness possible?
“Forgiveness exists already–now and eternally. We do not create it; we enter it.”
— Flora Slosson Wuellner, Forgiveness, the Passionate Journey: Nine Steps of Forgiving Through Jesus’ Beatitudes
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Q: Good moral people believe in the death penalty. They find direction in the Bible, what do you say back to them?
Sister Helen Prejean [of “Dead Man Walking” fame]: I say the God you’re describing to me is a God that wants pain for pain, life for life, suffering for suffering and a death for a death. I do not believe in that kind of God. And I know that in the Bible there are many, many references to very harsh punishments but the Bible was written over 2000 years, a lot it comes out of the Mosaic Code where people didn’t have alternatives. By the time you get to Jesus Christ the thrust of his life and his message is not to return hate for hate. I don’t believe in that kind of God and I personally believe that’s a monster God who wants pain for pain and suffering and suffering like we do. I think that’s making God in our own image. And I disagree with that image of God.
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No one, no memory, should have the power to hold us down, to deny us peace. Forgiving is the real power.”
— Jose Hobday, in “Response.” The Sunflower. New York: Schocken Books
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The desert tradition offers a wonderful image of what it means to be transformed by God’s judgment into an instrument of healing in the world. Abba Moses, who had been a brigand in the Egyptian desert before his conversion, was held up as an example of repentance:
“There was a brother at Scetis who had committed a fault. So they called a meeting and invited Abba Moses. He refused to go. The priest sent someone to say to him, “They’re all waiting for you.” So Moses got up and set off; he took a leaky jug and filled it with water and took it with him. The others came out to meet him and said, “What is this, father?” The old man said to them, “My sins run out behind me and I cannot see them, yet here I am coming to sit in judgment on the mistakes of someone else.” When they heard this, they called off the meeting.
“Our refusal to judge others is not about minimizing sin; it is, rather, as Abba Moses and Célestin demonstrate, about learning to see the need for forgiveness that we all share in our own lives. This is, in practice, the step that makes healing possible. “To assume the right to judge, or to assume that you have arrived at a settled spiritual maturity that entitles you to prescribe confidently at a distance for another’s sickness, is in fact to leave others without the therapy that they need for their souls,” writes Archbishop Rowan Williams. “It is to cut them off from God, to leave them in their spiritual slavery — while reinforcing your own slavery.” Taking the step of repentance ourselves, we create space for the healing God wants to give, for the healing that each of us needs.”
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“To err is human; to forgive is divine.”
— Alexander Pope
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