Spiritual Corner -- I, Too, Must Forgive

Forgiveness sounds so easy. ““Forgive me and I forgive you.” But all of us know that saying it is one thing and actually doing it is quite another.

Every day, families break up over misunderstandings. Angers go deep, and once they have started, they just go on and on.

Everyone justifies themselves. Everyone wants to feel that they are fair but they are not; that they forgive, but they don’t; that they are right and the others, of course, is always wrong.

To forgive, we must learn how to love, and the only way you learn to love is through mistakes. And when you have made a mistake, you should remember the mistake. If you don’t, you will go out and do the same thing all over again.

This is the trouble with saying that “I am right” because “I am right” does something that is very, very dangerous. It destroys the power to love.

It is an act of arrogance because nobody can say, “I have never done anything wrong. I have never been so cruel that people have suffered humiliation and pain.” Everyone is a sinner. A sinner is one who refuses to love, or doesn’t care to love.

Jesus says, “If you don’t forgive, how can you ask your Father to forgive you when you have sinned?”

And the answer is if you want to be forgiven, you must forgive, not just confess before God that you have sinned. You must ask the other person’s forgiveness, or at least let him/her know that you recognise that you still have love in your heart, caring in your heart and the compassion to admit your mistake.

When Jesus was on the cross, his disciples all ran away. They deserted him in every way possible. And what did he do? He opened his arms on the cross, he looked up to his Father in heaven and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And so it is that our forgiveness is not based on our feeling, but on the notion that we have joined Jesus in his most painful time when we tend to lose hope in the world because of the bad things that have hurt us, and all the wrongs we have committed.

Therefore, to truly forgive and to be forgiven, there is only one way and it is Jesus’ way. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And when we do that, we begin to know how Jesus loves. If we do not forgive, we will never, never learn how to love.

Therefore, “Yes, I, too, must forgive, for they know not what they do.”

Yours,
Deacon Thomas Kung