1. Forgiveness rebuilds our damaged love-relations. Judgments, unforgiveness and revenge destroy love-relations around us and isolate us. Forgiveness releases us from the captivity of our egos and makes us able to find and create relationships with more and more new values and contents. Forgiveness restores the love-relation between the injurer, the aggrieved and the Father. With this forgiveness gives salvation and rebirth. (If you want to know, how forgiveness to ourselves relates to this, please read the post here.)
2. Forgiveness has enormous strength. Forgiveness is like a ticking bomb that we have placed in the center of the person’s conscience who had hurt us. It is only a question of time when it will blow up and repair him. A lot of people think that forgiveness disarms us and makes us defenseless. On the contrary: forgiveness surrounds us with the flow and armor of love and makes us invulnerable. (If you want to know how, please read the post here.)
3. Forgiveness as both the prerequisite and consequence of Christ's three virtues, humility, purity and poorness. All these virtues can be developed after we have forgiven to others. However, these virtues make any further forgiveness unnecessary, since they protect us from harm. (If you want to know how, please read the post here.)
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1. Forgiveness rebuilds our damaged love-relations
Judgments, unforgiveness and resentment isolate us. Our harms, injuries and wounds, torn open again and again, lock the ego into a hate-cage where it remains alone with its disturbed self. This is a self-exciting, self-provoking and self-destroying process which cannot be healed. Many people think that revenge remedies harms. On the contrary. Revenge destroys many more love-relations around us and isolates us even more. But forgiveness releases us from the captivity of our egos and makes us able to find and create relationships with more and more new values and contents. Rancor and revenge lead to smallness. Forgiveness brings consummation.
Sin and lack of forgiving the sin always go hand in hand with the injury of our love-relations. The ancestral sin was not only a trespass against God but the snub to God's love giving the gifts of Creation and Paradise (Laszlo Lukacs SchP; Credo 2017/3-4). Forgiveness restores the love-relation between the injurer and the aggrieved. But not only this happens. Redemption, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ restored our loving relationship with the Father. Forgiveness consummates the love-relation between the aggrieved and the Father. The aggrieved does not remain isolated from accepting love and mercy any more as he was before his reconciliation, locked into his ego-centric status. Thus forgiveness is a prerequisite of Mercy, too. Forgiveness thus means salvation and rebirth.
„God does not forgive like a forgetful man but like a saver.
Remission of Jesus is without any condition, clause or compensation.
Forgiveness is not being benignant but restarts life.”
(Ermes Ronchi; retreat of Pope Francis and the Roman Curia in 2016)
Peter Grendorf, my Lutheran pastor drew my attention to that the line of the Lord's Prayer, "and forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors" (Matthew 6:12) was written in past tense in the original text. Thus according to the original interpretation we should have forgiven by the time we ourselves are forgiven. Full of rancor, without repairing our love-relations, we cannot come into such an intimate contact with the Father and Christ, where the Totality of their forgiveness may fill us.
„A lot of people live as they would have been self-sentenced for life,
under the pressure of remorsefulness caused by their past mistakes.
But Jesus opens the door of our prison,
and dismounts the torturing tools on which
we often hang ourselves and others.”
(Ermes Ronchi; retreat of Pope Francis and the Roman Curia in 2016)
A key part of forgiveness is the capability of forgiving ourselves. It is important to ask at the "as we also forgave our debtors" line of the Lord's Prayer that who is who made the largest debt to us? We ourselves! It is time to realize that we ourselves were who blocked our own way towards a decent life the most. Thus, there is a lot to forgive to ourselves – even if we had not realized this consciously before. We are becoming capable of accepting Mercy as our inner selves are forgiving our outer egos. We repair the love-relation inside ourselves with this. The Mercy of forgiving ourselves is the first step and the core of all the Mercy we are given. Now we do not hate and accuse ourselves any more but love and prompt to do good deeds. We do not tie our egos down to our own past sins but we direct them up towards accepting Mercy and spread the good. By forgiving ourselves, our souls open to Mercy that starts to act inducing our good thoughts, good decisions and good deeds.
Forgiveness is the first and necessary step
that heals both ourselves and the world at the same time
leading towards our salvation and rebirth.
2. Forgiveness has enormous strength
A lot of people consider forgiveness (similarly to humility) as a sign of weakness. In the reality forgiveness has enormous strength. Forgiveness is like a ticking bomb that we have placed in the center of the person’s conscience who had hurt us. It is only a question of time when it will blow up and repair him. Rancor can fight only with rancor (but with that very well). Rancor is armless against forgiveness.
A lot of people think that forgiveness disarms us and makes us defenseless. The examples of the previous and the following parts show that it is on the contrary: forgiveness surrounds us with the flow and armor of love and makes us invulnerable.
3. Forgiveness as both the prerequisite and consequence of Christ's three virtues, humility, purity and poorness
"Put you on the armor of God,
that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil."
(Ephesians 6:11)
Forgiveness is quite deeply related to Christ's three virtues, humility, purity and poorness. All these virtues can be developed after we have forgiven to others. However, these virtues make any further forgiveness unnecessary, since they protect us from harm. How? Katalin Mezey asked the question in the closing issue of Credo in 2017, that „What is harm actually?" Her answer was: „Wrong not deserved.” Not deserved wrong diminishes and thus hurts the ego’s self-esteemed value. But if humility has already imbued us completely, let’s think it over: what kind of harm can be „not deserved”? If the status of humility has overwritten our ego and has opened our spirit for Totality, what significance does the ego have which thinks that it has been diminished and hurt? Taking on step further: if we are in the status of purity what dirt can soil us? Others may throw mud on us but in the status of purity this becomes completely uninteresting for us, does not soil us, since it does not even reach us any more. Taking one more step further: if we are in the status of poorness, where the Totality of love with the Father, Christ and all living creatures has completely pervaded us, who or what can hurt us? Who or what is able to overwrite THIS love anytime and anyhow in us? It is worth thinking about these questions deeply. Quoting István Örkény, the famous Hungarian writer: "People capable of brooding over it and taking care not to let their mind wander about, but keep them on the right track may get a scent of eternal verities."
If we think the above questions over thoroughly we can realize that real and total forgiving is not only changing the moment we made it but directs our whole future to a completely different Path that is free of hurts. The good news (evangelion/Gospel) is that after forgiving we become able to get united with Christ. Living in Christ the unspeakably beautiful shield of the Father surrounds us and protects us from any sins and impurity. This is how forgiveness leads us to get united with God’s love and glory, and to Eternal Life. Amen.
