How Forgiveness Can Heal Our Lives

By Linus Mundy

Last summer I read the life story of industrialist John D. Rockefeller. I had always been intrigued by the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of this larger-than-life American. Partly my interest was in just how it could be that someone at one period or moment in life would make a pretty good angel—and the next a pretty good rascal! I can personally relate to that, as a human being—and maybe you can, too.

But the Rockefeller story is particularly poignant because we read that, inspired by a Sunday-school class on forgiveness, the Rockefeller children initiated an end-of-day ritual. Each night, when they got into bed, they turned to their siblings and said, “Do you forgive me for all I have done to you today?” By the time they fell asleep, the air had been cleared and the day’s anger all erased.

Maybe it’s easier for children than us grown-ups to pray such an innocent prayer. And yet, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could hold such an end-of-day prayer in our own adult hearts? We do sometimes pray words such as, “Forgive us…as we forgive…” But what we often really mean is, “Forgive us as we wish we could forgive.”

Forgiveness, after all, is very difficult. So difficult that perhaps only children—and God—find it easy. For forgiveness is not only child-like; it is very God-like. The problem may be, according to humorist Garrison Keillor, that, “Since true forgiveness is such a Divine quality, we don’t have to practice it ourselves!”

Working Your Way Through While true forgiveness may indeed seem nothing short of divine, we humans are not excused from making our best effort to forgive. As a matter of fact, it is a central tenet in every religion—as well as a key component in almost every healing discipline. The fact is that we can find great comfort and healing when we open our hearts to forgive, to really forgive. Forgiveness, indeed, when we open our hearts up wide, can heal our very lives.

Forgive yourself. Christians are taught “a new commandment”: that we love one another; that we love our enemy; that we do good to those who hate us. And Christianity doesn’t hold a monopoly on this wise teaching; goodness and kindness to all—friend and foe alike—are at the center of religious belief worldwide.

But another reason to forgive is that forgiving is something good we can do for ourselves; it is a gift we can give to ourselves. Forgiveness is the choice that can help us get better, not bitter. While bitterness has us permanently stuck in our anger and hurt and resentment, forgiveness liberates us and makes us better.

“Always we begin again” is a motto of the Benedictine monks. It is essential to keep starting over, to keep “converting,” and especially to keep forgiving oneself. It is difficult, of course—who knows our own imperfections more than we do? And, we may ask, “How can a God who knows the real me still love me and forgive me?” And yet our religious teachings tell us over and over that we are empowered to forgive one another only after we first allow God to overwhelm us with gifts of gracious and merciful love.

As with any gift, however, it takes a willing giver and a willing receiver to make it a real gift. And so we need to ask ourselves: Are we willing receivers? Can we agree with the wisdom of St. Augustine who writes in his Confessions: “What indeed is more pitiful than a piteous person who has no pity for himself?” The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins seconded that sentiment by humbly admitting, “My own heart let me more have pity on.”

David Paul Hammer, living on death row in a Terre Haute, Indiana prison, has come to understand self-forgiveness. He writes from his prison cell to the editors of U.S. Catholic (Sept. 2000): “God knows my heart. He has forgiven me, and after 23 years of continuous incarceration, I’m ready to go home, to heaven, for then I will be forever free.”

Forgive others. I like the advice of one wise counselor who tells families to “use the same advice that folks in earthquake zones use: Don’t dwell on faults.” Writer Lawrence Crabb, Jr., offers this powerful definition which emphasizes the same point for married couples: “Any marriage is the union of two sinners. A happy marriage is the union of two forgivers.”

But what about people who don’t deserve our forgiveness—or don’t even want it, or who are so thick-skinned they wouldn’t notice it if we did grant it?! “Wisdom is knowing what to overlook,” might be one response.

Writer Lisa Engelhardt agrees, and brings it all down to earth by saying: “Forgiveness doesn’t come naturally. I personally believe we can’t get very far without appealing for divine help, and the single thing that I have found most helpful is prayer. I pray for myself to be able to forgive, and I pray for the other person (trying to avoid sentiments like, ‘Help her not be such a jerk!’). I try to shower that person with God’s love, to pray for the best for her.”

Forgive God. To forgive God gets us into that dangerous territory where we first have to admit our anger at God—at God’s seeming silence, at God’s mysterious “non-response” to our pleas. It is when our God appears to us more Monster than Mender—when an innocent child lies near death, when the impact of a Holocaust or a Khmer Rouge hits us—that we are especially called to work on the ultimate forgiveness, our forgiveness of God.

But God is not a “Master who rules from above,” says theologian Gregory Baum, but a Master “who rules from within—as summons and vitality in people’s lives. The death that destroys is never the will of God. On the contrary, God is the never-ending summons to life.”

Realize forgiveness is a process. One of the most humbling realizations about forgiveness is that in many cases, with forgiveness, you can expect nothing to change! Except yourself. Forgiveness will not change the facts. But we can change our interpretation of these facts, with humility. Being humble does not mean groveling; it means, rather, coming to the truth. Writer Christina Grof tells us, in The Thirst for Wholeness, that forgiveness is not about repressing and forgetting, but about revealing and remembering. “It is not about avoiding or escaping reality but about accepting it.”

We forgive by realizing forgiveness is a process. Truth be told, the gospel mandate to forgive “seven times 70 times” often means forgiving the same person for the same offense seven times 70 times! For many of us, this process may require the wise support of a spiritual director or the wisdom and direction of a therapist. At the very least it requires that we practice, practice, practice.

We forgive by letting God do the hard part. “Praying for an enemy sounds like an easy out—and it is that if your prayer is really for yourself,” writes Carol Luebering in The Forgiving Family. “But when you stop praying for the other person’s change of heart—for any kind of control over that person—and just pray for him or her, it’s not easy at all. It’s loving—and it will plunge you right into the heart of God.” Some things, after all, can only be healed through “divine intervention.” It is crucial to remember that we only have to be willing to heal; God can help us do the rest.

Take heart. Writer William Menninger, in Process, sums up our personal duty to forgive in this way: “Forgiveness is demanded by the very nature of man and woman. It is not only divine, it is also human. God commands it because without it we are less than human, with it we are more.”

It is quite a revelation when we come to understand that the person or thing that had the power to hurt us doesn’t hold the power to forgive. We do. The power of human forgiveness is in the hands of the one who has been injured. And that’s all of us.

How Forgiveness Can Heal Our Lives, written by Linus Mundy and originally published in 2007, has been retired from print publication and is not available for purchase. Though it is no longer in print, we’re grateful to continue sharing it online and hope it continues to offer comfort and encouragement to readers.