By Ruth Kennedy

I was once asked, by a friend who was not religious, why the Church required us to ‘forgive everyone’. How was it fair that you could just say sorry, and it would all be forgotten and wiped away?

I agreed with the sentiment behind his questions. I knew that he had suffered a lot and had people in his life that would be hard to forgive, for valid reasons. I also understood that this conception of the Church was a misconception, but a very difficult one to overcome. He saw this concept of forgiveness as a grave lack of justice. 

But forgiveness is a tenet of our Faith. When Jesus was dying on the Cross, He said of His executioners, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do”. (Luke 23:34). So how do we understand this forgiveness, and how can we respond to those who find forgiveness hard?

A common phrase that people use when talking about forgiveness is that we must “forgive and forget”. When this is applied to the general ups and downs of ongoing relationships, it’s a helpful reminder to let go of the small things; the grudges of daily life. It’s an acknowledgement that we too can annoy or irritate others, and that we’re all called to help one another carry our imperfections.

But this phrase can also be very damaging. It needs to be applied carefully. You are not required to keep on ‘forgetting’ repeated abuse or nastiness. Some relationships are unhealthy and need to be moved on from. You are not expected to make up, speak to, or even see again, a person who has damaged you.  And certainly when we have been very badly hurt by others, it is important not to ‘forget’. Forgetting will not help us access the support we need to heal, or bring the other person legally to justice, if that is appropriate. 

So, forgiveness is not about letting the other person get away with it. God cares about our suffering, and He does not expect us to get over things rapidly. He honours our emotions and knows it takes time to heal. He is with us all in our suffering. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18).

At the same time, God does not want us to suffer any longer than is necessary. That is where forgiveness can help us heal. Forgiveness means that we don’t have to be consumed by revenge or bitterness. Forgiveness does allow us to move on, which is not the same as forgetting. Forgiveness allows us to reach a place where we are not consumed by what has happened, where the other person’s sin does not control us any longer. Forgiving someone else brings us freedom. 

Do people get away with what they’ve done, when we forgive them? Perhaps we should also ask whether they get away with what they’ve done if we don’t forgive them. Often, revenge only harms ourselves, and does very little to punish the person at fault. It’s not easy to realise this when we are suffering because of someone else’s actions. We really have to trust that God, who is heartbroken at the suffering of any of His creation, also wills the conversion of sinners. We can safely leave those who hurt us to both God’s justice, and mercy. In the meantime, forgiveness allows us to find peace for ourselves. 

The second part of my friend’s question pertained to the idea of personal forgiveness of one’s own sins, in the eyes of the Church. He was trying to understand the Sacrament of Confession.

The Catechism says that “only God forgives sin” (1441). As Catholics, we believe that God does this through the means of a priest, in the person of Christ, in the Confessional. In complete privacy, we state our sins, and are given absolution. The sin is forgiven, and we are relieved of the burden of it (though not necessarily its consequences). From the outside, this process does look scandalous. That is, however, the depth of God’s mercy; that all sins can be forgiven. In the Church there is always a place to go, that gives a way forward through the darkest behaviours of our lives. But to someone who does not believe in God or religion, it does look as though the person has got off very lightly. If we are also suffering greatly because of that person’s sin, this is understandably difficult, perhaps impossible, to accept. 

However, there are some key points to make here. Firstly, anyone who has ever been to Confession will know that, while it is not a torture chamber, and while it is a place of healing and peace, it also requires great humiliation, bravery and strength to get yourself to Confession and state your sin aloud. It’s easy to mull over what you’ve done wrong in your own mind, much harder to verbalise it. So it’s to be hoped that if someone who has harmed you very deeply, seeks out Confession, they will be doing it from a place of true contrition. 

Secondly, when someone experiences forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession, after true contrition, the peace and healing it brings often evokes a desire to reconcile with others. It can also cause a huge change in their life, a new desire to bring about goodness, instead of evil.

The Catechism states that: 

“The confession (or disclosure) of sins, even from a simply human point of view, frees us and facilitates our reconciliation with others. Through such an admission man looks squarely at the sins he is guilty of, takes responsibility for them, and thereby opens himself again to God and to the communion of the Church in order to make a new future possible.” (1455)

Many dramatic conversion stories begin with an encounter with the Sacrament of Confession. The tangible feeling of complete forgiveness is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. It is energising, and life changing. 

There is then another aspect of Confession (and forgiveness of sin in general) that provides the justice that my friend was asking about; and that is reparation. This falls into two parts; justice, and penance. The Catechism says: 

“Many sins wrong our neighbour. One must do what is possible in order to repair the harm (e.g., return stolen goods, restore the reputation of someone slandered, pay compensation for injuries). Simple justice requires as much.” (1459)

This is an obvious requirement for anyone who is sorry for their sins, and it is a clear sign that the Church expects, and encourages, justice to be done in reparation for sin. 

The Catechism then goes on to say: 

“But sin also injures and weakens the sinner himself, as well as his relationships with God and neighbour. Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must "make satisfaction for" or "expiate" his sins. This satisfaction is also called "penance."”

At the end of one’s Confession, the priest will give the penitent an “act of penance”. This is a small act that the penitent is asked to do after their Confession. It will be chosen by the priest and suited to their situation. It will correspond, in some way, to the sins they have confessed. Its aim is not to humiliate, but to be for one’s “spiritual good”. It could be in the form of prayer, a practical service, or perhaps a small act of self denial.  

Penance is not an act that means that we ourselves are forgiving or exonerating our own sins; 

“The satisfaction that we make for our sins, however, is not so much ours as though it were not done through Jesus Christ. We who can do nothing ourselves, as if just by ourselves, can do all things with the cooperation of ‘him who strengthens’ us.” 

Penance is a cooperation with God, it acknowledges that, not only can we not forgive our own sins, but that the desire for justice is a good and natural one. It is a small atonement, a recognition that we have hurt others, and ourselves, by our sins. Finally, it forms us to be more like Christ, “who alone expiated our sins once for all,” in the greatest act of atonement, His death on the Cross. 

When we are hurt terribly by someone, it can be hard to acknowledge that forgiveness, Confession, and conversion are actually the best solutions for both parties involved. Forgiveness frees the wronged from the exhausting burden of revenge, while the best result of forgiveness for the perpetrator is a transformed life. Forgiveness gives so much more than merely a sense of “getting away with it”. God is the one who forgives, and He doesn’t deal in anything so mediocre as simply letting us off the hook. He gives us so much more than that. He gives everyone complete healing, restoration, freedom and peace.