The Jewish writer Elie Wiesel tells a beautiful Hasidic story
about forgiveness. A wealthy Jewish timber merchant in Eastern
Europe settles into a train carriage, the story begins. Just before
departure an aged, somewhat unkempt, malodorous rabbi settles
into the same compartment. Throughout the journey the merchant
pointedly, and with fastidious disdain, ignores the old man. When
the train arrives at its destination, the merchant sees hundreds
of people milling about in eager anticipation. He discovers that
the object of their devotion is the old rabbi whom he had so rudely
snubbed. The rabbi, he learns, is widely regarded in pious communities
as a living saint who possesses profound wisdom and a reputation
as a healer.
The merchant pushes his way through the ecstatic crowd to find
the old rebbe: "Rabbi," the merchant pleads, "please
forgive me for my rudeness and please say a prayer for my son,
who is chronically ill." The old rabbi responds: "Be assured that
I will pray for your son, who, God willing, will gain his health.
However, I cannot forgive you. If you want forgiveness, you must
seek it by apologizing to every poor old man in the world."
The wisdom narrative carries with it a lot of moral freight.
To seek forgiveness demands that the person who desires it must
understand the gravity of what has happened prior to the need
to seek forgiveness. First comes confession, then forgiveness.
Sometimes the act of forgiveness is only a banal matter: We hurt
someone's feeling or do someone a petty injustice or simply omit
an act of courtesy. Once we understand the facts, we seek forgiveness.
Often it is granted. At other times, the capacity to forgive seems
beyond human reach. The parent of an abused or murdered child
cannot find it possible to forgive the perpetrator. At other times
a person has been so hurt by the cruelty of another that an untreatable
canker burrows into the heart of the victim.
Whole peoples have been so victimized in history that the issue
of forgiveness appears unthinkable, perhaps even unjust. Do the
concentration camp victims forgive the persecutors? Should they?
Can they? Should forgiveness even be in the vocabulary of those
who have been tortured or murdered or ground down by generations
of oppressors? Such questions are not abstract exercises in ethics
seminars but sad realities. Can we really expect those who were
horribly mutilated in recent African civil wars to forgive their
enemies?
Closer to home are those ugly rifts within families. Some are
brought on by betrayals, others by unpremeditated words hurled
in a moment of anger or as a momentary desire to wound. The result
can be estrangement between parent and child or one side of the
family against the other. This kind of break creates the world
of icy silences within the home or of distant family members who
are remembered only with bitterness or contempt or anger. It is
a world in which every word is seen as venomous and every slight
intended.
To be on the receiving end of a terrible injustice, either as
a person or as a group, carries with it an even worse wound. Father
Virgil Elizondo, a visiting professor at Notre Dame, put it well
in an essay he wrote for the journal Concilium nearly
two decades ago: "The greatest damage of an offense is that it
destroys my freedom to be me, for I will find myself involuntarily
dominated by the inner rage and resentment -- a type of spiritual
poison which will permeate all my being -- which will be a subconscious
but very powerful influence in most of my life."
The issue of forgiveness and healing is especially complex because
Christian faith has such a prominent rhetoric of forgiveness and
the promise of pardon embedded within it. After all, at the nadir
of his earthly life, abandoned by his disciples, Jesus looked
out at his Roman executioners and the braying crowd to say: "Father,
forgive them for they know not what they do." That act of forgiveness
put into practice what Jesus had preached in his public life.
Some of those words have become among the more famous of his teachings:
"If anyone strike you on the right cheek, turn the other also"
(Matthew 5:39). "Love your enemies; pray for those who persecute
you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (Matthew
5: 44-45). "If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you" (Matthew 6: 14). "Do not judge so
that you may not be judged" (Matthew 7:1). And, of course, the
Lord's Prayer makes our right to ask forgiveness from God dependent
on our willingness to forgive others: "Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us." Should we forgive
seven times? the apostle asks Jesus. Seventy times seven is the
instant response (Matthew 18:22).
The Christian tradition not only proclaims that teaching of
forgiveness but has in its possession more than one vehicle to
effect forgiveness. The sacrament of reconciliation comes immediately
to mind: We confess in order to be forgiven. In the Middle Ages
bands of friars would preach mercy in the piazzas of the towns
of Italy. At the culminating moment of the mission, people could
reconcile and end ongoing vendettas while keeping their honor
intact. Contemporary church members at both the informal and formal
level seek to reconcile warring factions -- reconciliations made
difficult because of decades or even centuries of bitter animosity
that militate against such mutual forgiveness, as strife in Northern
Ireland so clearly attests.
Even though the imperative to forgive is at the heart of the
Christian message -- after all, the saving mysteries of Christ
reconcile us to God and to each other -- when we are called upon
to forgive in specific moments there is a natural tendency not
to do so. Jesus relates a parable about an unforgiving servant
whose master forgives his debt. The unforgiving servant, however,
mistreats a fellow servant who happens to owe him money. When
the master finds out, he consigns the wicked servant to his tormentors
until his once-forgiven debt is paid. Jesus concludes: "So my
heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not
forgive your brother or sister from your heart" (Matthew 18:35).
How literally can we take that parable?
Do not many of us go to church or interact in our family or
neighborhood while seething with anger or hurt or thoughts of
vengeance at ills directed towards us? How many times have we
seen heartbroken families outside courthouses demanding the full
enactment of the law (even death!) against those who commit terrible
crimes against them? How could I put down on paper the evil thoughts
and boiling anger I felt a few years ago against those who broke
into our house while we were at Christmas Eve Mass and stole our
children's gifts, my holiday wine, our cameras and other personal
goods? That was some years ago, but I still feel the need for
revenge at the thought of those intruders. When we came home that
snowy Christmas evening, the thought of forgiveness never entered
my mind.
Many have pondered this call for forgiveness so clearly articulated
in the Gospels. In our own day, no Christian has thought, spoken
and acted on this issue with more clarity than Archbishop Desmond
Tutu of South Africa. With the fall of the apartheid regime in
that country -- with its history of suppression, displacement,
torture, murder and violence against the Black majority -- it
would have been easy to turn the pent-up rage of the majority
against their former persecutors. If there was any country ripe
for a bloodbath it was South Africa. The extraordinary lengths
that the South African government went to avoid wholesale revenge
against their former oppressors by establishing a reconciliation
commission is a model of civility. Tutu and Nelson Mandela fought
for such reconciliation because they understood that if a large
segment of society lived with hatred and revenge in their hearts,
they could never construct a humane society.
Reconciliation in South Africa did not occur by a blanket absolution
issued like some kind of presidential decree. The reconciliation
commission made an irreducible demand that has deep religious
resonances: A policeman or agent of the government who persecuted,
betrayed or killed people had to come before the commission, admit
to crimes and plead guilty. Only then could reconciliation occur.
The calculus is quite simple: I am guilty and I want forgiveness.
In order to receive such, I must confess and ask for forgiveness.
The language is almost sacramental. As Tutu wrote in No Future
without Forgiveness: "Forgiving and being reconciled are
not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is
not patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to
the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse,
the pain, the degradation, the truth. . . . It is a risky undertaking
but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end dealing with
the real situation helps to bring about real healing."
It is not given to many of us -- who would want such a task?
-- to work on reconciliation between warring countries or feuding
cultures or antagonistic religions. Most of our moments when forgiveness
becomes an option are at a more precise local level. Nor should
we be too prodigal in advising others to "forgive and forget"
until we ourselves have experienced that painful process where
we might have reached the point where we can forgive even if we
cannot forget. How I admire those families who stand before the
courts to plead against the death penalty for the murderers of
their sons or daughters. They do it in the name of forgiveness,
but they also know that forgiveness does not translate into freedom
from consequences. Those same families may be inspired to forgive,
but they will never forget. Universally, such families almost
always say that they will live their entire lives with the memory
of what has happened? Would we not think it quite odd if they
did not say something like that?
What does the wisdom of the Christian tradition say about this
terrible issue? What can we say about forgiveness that does not
sound like "cheap grace"? It may not be possible to speak in a
totally satisfactory fashion about this topic, but we can at least
establish some basic propositions that may bring us out of a state
of resentment, a thirst for revenge, and all of the other powers
that gnaw at our vitals when we actually need to forgive or yearn
for forgiveness.
The refusal to forgive generates an internal poison that takes
on a malignant life of its own. The refusal brings with it a brooding
rehearsal of past events that, especially when it involves a social
crime, erupts in violence when the opportunity affords itself.
Does not the inability to forgive and reconcile stand behind the
cycle of violence that we read about in the macabre stories that
appear in the media: Hutu against Tutsi; Protestant against Catholic;
Muslim against Hindu?
Forgiveness is an act requiring dialogue, as the petition in
the Lord's Prayer makes plain: "Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us." Does anyone think that
it is better to war than to talk, whether it be a warring couple
in a fractious marriage or two peoples who glare across a demilitarized
line? Is not the desire to reconcile always a gesture for peace
and against violence?
Forgiveness does not exclude the righting of wrongs. That truth
is deeply embedded in the sacrament of reconciliation, where confession
is never enough: There must be penance and a firm will not to
relapse into old sins. Forgiveness demands at the very least justice
and, at best, charity. Speaking of religious dialogue in his encyclical
Ut Unum Sint, Pope John Paul II wrote that all authentic
dialogue is also an examination of conscience to force people
to see where they have been wrong and to find ways of righting
those wrongs. When what is past cannot be undone, justice must
be tempered with a kind of "letting go."
Forgiveness becomes more difficult if we focus only on the act(s)
that create the need for forgiveness. Forgiveness becomes less
difficult when we can turn from the deed to the person. Forgiveness
is not about the resolution of deeds as much as it is a reconciliation
between persons. It is precisely at this point where a genuine
conversion must take place, because it is only when we can turn
away from the hatred we feel for this person or that group that
forgiveness can occur.
To forgive, however, does not mean to forget. We as a people
have a moral duty not to forget precisely because the remembrance
of terrible crimes is a warning against allowing such things to
happen again. Was it not Hitler who infamously remarked that nobody
in his time remembered the genocidal Turkish attacks against the
Armenians? The ever-cynical Hitler understood that if the memory
of atrocity remains alive in historical memory, the temptation
to act violently becomes more difficult when opportunity arises.
We need the memory of those who recall past crimes as a warning
against future crimes. What forgiveness or reconciliation accomplishes
is to take the poison out of remembering and remove the blockages
that do not allow us to move beyond past crimes and outrages.
Even in the sacrament of reconciliation, we must do penance for
what we have done.
The parable of the prodigal son is instructive here. The father
knew that his son had squandered his inheritance. What he also
knew, despite the fact that the elder son was resentful as he
welcomed back his son who had come from a far-off land was this:
"We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours
was dead and has come to life, was lost and has been found." The
alternative would have been an alienated family, a father eternally
grieving, a son permanently lost.
To reach that state when it is possible to "celebrate and rejoice"
rarely comes from the sheer dint of the human will. The natural
impulse to forgive is rarely present; the desire to strike back
is almost always our first instinct. To forgive in the face of
grievous injury comes from some impulse that Christians would
call grace.
The African psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela interviewed
the convicted apartheid death squad leader Eugene de Kock for
long hours in his prison cell, where he serves a life sentence
for his crimes. In her recent book A Human Being Died That
Night, she writes that she was not sure she could forgive
a man who did such violence to her people. She did find herself
profoundly touched by his evident pain. In the end, as a reviewer
of her book wrote, it was not so much that the person forgiven
was absolved of his crime (only God can forgive such crimes) as
it is that the one who seeks to forgive finds herself cleansed.
I think that gets it right. To forgive the one who seeks forgiveness
is to purge oneself from those venoms of hatred and the thirst
for vengeance (it is quite another thing to ask for justice) that
eats at our very humanity. To forgive the person who does not
seek forgiveness is a far greater act that comes only under the
impulse of grace. As it comes, it also demonstrates that the graced
power to forgive overcomes the power to hate, wound and destroy.
That graced power is the deep secret of the Gospel.
* * *
Lawrence S. Cunningham is John A. O'Brien professor of theology
at Notre Dame.
(October 2003)
