First Sunday of Advent: A New Age - CUA Office of Public Affairs

"Forgiveness and Reconciliation"

By the Rev. James A. Wiseman, O.S.B.

The Catholic University of America

July 1, 2000

In this past year many apologies and requests for forgiveness have been in the news: Pope John Paul II asked forgiveness for many of the Church’s past failings, Senator John McCain apologized for not speaking his true mind about the Confederate battle flag at the time he was hoping to win the South Carolina primary, and the governor of my neighboring state of Maryland has issued an apology for the slavery that existed within its borders in past centuries.

Many people have applauded these and similar efforts, but many others remain unsatisfied. Some complain that the apologies should be still more explicit, while others find it pointless to ask forgiveness for wrongs committed by persons who have long since died. Whatever one thinks about these specific instances, they can at least lead us to explore the very notion of seeking and being granted forgiveness.

My own thinking about forgiveness starts at what may seem an unlikely place, the first chapter of Genesis. Here there is not yet any mention of sin, which only enters the scene two chapters later, but rather the teaching that God saw all that he had made and found it good, even very good, and that we humans were made according to God’s image and likeness. All of this points to the truth that there is some redeemable goodness, some possibility of conversion, in even the most evil of persons. It is my conviction that such conversion will often be elicited by an act of forgiveness.

The forgiveness I’m talking about need not even come from outside oneself. In his beautiful book Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, Kent Nerburn writes of a time when – unintentionally – he so hurt his father’s confidence and resolve that the latter’s life was irrevocably changed. Nerburn recognized and regretted his mistake, but he also realizes that he cannot dwell on it: "The greatest gift I can give myself, and my father," he writes, "is to forgive that mistake, costly though it may have been in human terms. If I were to dwell on it, I would lose the joyful moments that remain in my heart about my father."

What Nerburn wrote about forgiving himself is just as true about forgiving others. Sometimes we may not be psychologically able to forgive right away. Pain, anger, and indignation are not only understandable but may be needful for a time, yet ultimately they ought to yield to a desire for reconciliation and forgiveness. Jesus modeled this for us in his earthly life with his powerful teaching about forgiving seventy times seven times and then in his risen life by the forgiveness offered to Peter by the Sea of Tiberias, where he commissioned the one who had denied him to be the chief pastor and provider for his flock: "Feed my lambs, … feed my sheep." I do not doubt that the forgiven Peter became equally forgiving of others during the rest of his life, just as his current successor, Pope John Paul II, has forgiven the man who tried to assassinate him in 1981. If even such examples do not move us, then perhaps the words of the great South African writer Alan Paton will do so: "There is a hard law that when a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive."

Any questions or comments? cu a-public-affairs@cua.edu

Revised: February 12, 2001