Forgiveness Tour

Tuesday of First Week in Lent 2025

Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, as Genesis teaches, but our mental image of God, if we try to make one, is corrupted by our experience of other people. When the Greeks envisioned their so-called gods, they tended to be a lot more powerful than even the strongest human, but a great deal more wicked in their dealings with humans and even other “gods.” You can check out Greek or Roman mythology for examples.

In the passage just before the one from Isaiah we just heard, God, speaking through Isaiah, tells us that His divine thoughts are not like our human thoughts, and His ways are not like our ways. Heaven, imagined as God’s abode, is high above earth. Just like that, God’s purpose and actions, His “ways” are higher than ours. That means they are so much better that they redefine the meaning of the word “better.” And if you want an example, consider that the Son of God emptied Himself of His glory to take on human nature—yours and mine—and not only to show us Himself as the best version of humanness, but to die in our stead so that we could be raised to divine status. As Pope Benedict taught, God loved us to His own detriment, subjecting His all-holy divinity to buffeting, spitting and unjust murder. That was all to our good, so that in Him, and with Him, we could rise and ascend to the highest state, union with the Trinity forever.

As King David said in today’s psalm, “when the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.” When we are broken-hearted, He can heal us with the mercy from His Sacred Heart.

Thus, when the disciples asked the Lord Jesus how they should pray, He taught them the prayer we know as the “Lord’s prayer” or the “Our Father.” This prayer is a crucial component of the forgiveness given by God for our sins. Our biggest fear as unredeemed humans is the fear of death, and Jesus wants to relieve all of us of that fear. Being incorporated into His mystical Body through faith and the sacraments makes that happen, because Jesus’s death and resurrection and ascension is ours. There’s a catch, however, and that’s easy to read but not so easy to live. We must forgive anyone who has offended us: “if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Praised be God. He will always give us the grace to accomplish anything He requires. The gift of forgiveness, even of our enemies, is ours for the asking.

Let me suggest an approach: take a forgiveness tour in your mind, and as far as possible, to the faces of those who have hurt you in some way. Start off with the easiest person, maybe somebody who hurt you just a little. Day by day, whittle that list until you get to the ones who have really injured you, maybe even physically, but certainly in your heart. Ask Christ for the grace to do it, and make the list disappear.

One last thing to remember. You recall every hurt; that is a function of your sensitivity. The injuring party very likely won’t remember doing anything to you. So if all you can do is mentally imagine them before you, go ahead and say quietly, “I forgive you.” That can only do good for your soul and then thank God for the grace you received.