DEFENSE OF FORGIVENESS
Almost always when I’ve written about forgiveness, I’ve received letters, generally anonymous, in which I’m accused of forgetting the suffering of the victims of terrorism, of not understanding the humiliation of one who has been betrayed by their spouse, of not «having my feet on the ground» and things like that.
It’s not hard for me to understand this resistance to forgiveness. How am I not going to sense the anger, powerlessness and grief of one who’s been a victim of violence, disdain or betrayal? But precisely the resentment and aggressivity that is indicated beneath those lines make me see with greater clarity what would a world be like in which forgiveness was bypassed.
There’s a defense mechanism that’s well known by psychologists. In virtue of a «mysterious mimicry», someone who has been a victim of aggression tries on their part to imitate somehow their aggressor. It involves an almost instinctive reaction that is unleashed unconsciously in the individual or collective and it can even get transmitted from generation to generation.
If at some moment you don’t produce a reaction of contrary movement, the evil tends to keep going. When the victim doesn’t want to or can’t forgive, there remains in them a «wound that’s badly healed» that causes them damage, since it chains them negatively to the past. In the same way, resentment that’s entrenched in a society makes it more difficult to have clarity in paths of living together and can block every effort to find a solution to the conflicts.
The desire for revenge is undoubtedly the most instinctive response to the offense. The person needs to defend themselves from the wound received, but as warns the well-known expert Jacques Pohier, whoever tries to heal their wound by inflicting suffering on the aggressor, makes a mistake. The suffering doesn’t possess a magic power to heal the humiliation or the aggression they received. It can produce a brief satisfaction, but the person needs something more to return to live in a healthy way. Henri Lacordaire said it a while back: «Do you want to be happy for a moment? Get even. Do you want to be happy forever? Forgive».
Sometimes we forget that the process of forgiveness does more good for the one offended, since it frees them from evil, makes their dignity and nobility grow, gives them energy to recreate their life, allows them to begin new projects. When Jesus invites us to forgive «seventy times seven», he’s inviting us to follow the more healthy and effective path to eradicate evil from our life. His words acquire a depth all the greater for one who believes in God as the final source of forgiveness: «Forgive and you will be forgiven».
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
