Forgiveness

Forgiveness means that I am continually willing to forgive the other person for not being God--for not fulfilling all my needs. I, too, must ask forgiveness for not being able to fulfill other people's needs.... The interesting thing is that when you can forgive people for not being God, then you can celebrate that they are a reflection of God." (Henri HENRI - Higher Education Network of Research Information (University of New Orleans) Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing [Crossroad], cited in Martin E. Marty's newsletter Context)

When we have been wounded by the Church, our temptation is to reject it. But when we reject the Church it becomes very hard for us to keep in touch with the living Christ. When we say, “I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,” we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too.

The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the Church seldom asks us for forgiveness, at least not officially.

But the Church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the Church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness.

It is important to think about the Church not as “over there” but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer.”

“There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not been able fully to receive it.

Only as people who have accepted forgiveness can we find the inner freedom to give it. Why is receiving forgiveness so difficult? It is very hard to say, “Without your forgiveness I am still bound to what happened between us. Only you can set me free.” That requires not only a confession that we have hurt somebody but also the humility to acknowledge our dependency on others. Only when we can receive forgiveness can we give it.”

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour -- unceasingly.

That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.--Henri Nouwen

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