ugnet_: Forgiveness a gift of love

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Sunday Comment By Fr Wynand Katende

Forgiveness a gift of love
April 18 - 24, 2004

Read John 20:19-23 �Receive the Holy Spirit; for those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven; for those whose you retain, are retained.� During the �Truth and Reconciliation� exercise meant to heal the wounds of post apartheid South Africa, a woman startled everyone, when after a young man had confessed having killed her son, announced that she had not only forgiven him but also that she would wish to adopt him to succeed the dead son!! That would be full circle forgiveness. Psychologists, sociologists and moralists agree that forgiveness is the kernel of all human relations but yet eludes human ability. It is a complex subject. Many people find themselves indulging in grudges instead of offering forgiveness, the most essential commodity to make the world a better place to live in. As one doctor has remarked, �Ill will and grudges help to make people sick. Forgiveness will do more towards getting them well than any pill�. Indeed many people are suffering from a disease called �grudgitis�, meaning, a long hatred of another person. Funny! By holding a grudge against a sinner one keeps the sinner imprisoned in his sinfulness. That makes two sins, the latter being a sin of hatred. People who do not forgive live in the past. Whereas by forgiving, one begins to live in the present, stops identifying sin with the sinner in order to free the sinner. To forgive is to open one�s heart in order to allow in the offender and to accord him full human dignity and rights. It is to make him an equal and not an inferior. It is to make peace. Forgiveness is a gift of love. �Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him may not perish, but be saved�. Today we are invited to celebrate and internalise God�s gift of forgiveness. Forgiveness is at the heart of �Alleluia� (praise God). Through the �Passing Over� (Easter) of his Son from death to a new life humanity has been freed from sin and its consequences. The magnitude of human sinfulness manifested itself in the crucifixion of the innocent Son of God. In the crucifixion of Jesus mankind attempted to kill God himself! This induced death to sting the wrong person, rendering it powerless. In human terms, Jesus would have used the occasion of his suffering and hanging on the cross to curse and grudge against his persecutors, but he instead prayed to God to grant them forgiveness. By virtue of this prayer and the sacrifice of his dear Son, God so generously granted a general amnesty to all sinners of all time. At his resurrection, Jesus greeted humanity with an olive branch �peace�; indicating that full reconciliation between God and humanity and among humans is now possible. Yet, having lived among us and experience our difficulty with forgiving, Jesus breathed on the disciples and imparted on them the faculty to forgive people�s sins. Hence, genuine forgiveness comes to us only as gift from God. This goes to confirm the saying by A. Pope, �to err is human, to forgive is divine.� By virtue of this gift the Christian community has been ordained and empowered to minister it to humanity. The Church has this gift in form of the �sacrament of reconciliation�. Permit me to observe that we are living in a society that has become less human, less peaceful less loving and less forgiving. Our lack of forgiveness stands out as the sin of the modern world. Like wise it is an indication that we are not appreciative of God�s gift of forgiveness as ministered to us in the Church, in the sacrament of �Reconciliation�. �Our capacity to forgive is proportional to our experience of being forgiven�, says Theodore E. Dobson. Forgiveness is an essential dimension of Christian life. It leads to Christian maturity and enables us to remove barriers that exist among people. PEACE.

� 2004 The Monitor Publications

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