|
|
|
I was
doing an “emotional healing exercise” in my [self-help spiritual
healing workbook] today for the first time. . . . The first step was to
write a letter and say “I’m angry” to the person who hurt
me, write the reasons why, write about my fears, write about how my life
has become because of my experience with this person, and write about my
sad feelings. The second step was to write as if the person who hurt me was
completely healed and was now in heaven standing next to Jesus. I had to
write a letter of apology as if I were this person speaking to myself
with comforting and loving words. And even though I had to imagine
this person as being completely healed, as being pure, as having no more
sin, and as being filled with God’s love, I couldn’t help thinking,
“He doesn’t mean what he said,” even though the letter was
all my imagination. The next step was to write a letter of apology to this
person, but I couldn’t bring myself to apologize no matter how many
times I re-read that person’s letter of apology (that I wrote) to myself.
I felt stubborn and proud, so I stopped. . . . I seem to be having the .
. . problem of being unable to forgive and to trust.
|
 his issue about forgiveness with
which you are struggling actually involves two separate concepts.
Purified in
Heaven
The first concept is touched
upon when you are asked the hypothetical question, “If you met your
worst enemy in heaven, could you forgive him?”
Now, most people, in considering
their answer, forget the following basic concept: any soul who goes to
heaven must, by necessity, have been purified in Purgatory, such that the
soul’s love is absolutely pure. There can be no deception here.
It’s not like in a court of law where a criminal can fool a judge with
false contrition just to escape punishment. Nor is it like an irresponsible
father asking his children to forgive him.
God cannot be fooled.
At the time of its judgment,
the soul is confronted with the light of absolute truth; any impurity
will send the soul into perfectly just punishment, either in
hell or in Purgatory, depending
on whether or not sins have been repented. In Purgatory,
the purification is absolute, and only after such purification can the soul
stand in the presence of God’s pure love in
heaven.
Therefore, it would not be possible
for you to meet your enemy in heaven unless both of you were in a state
of pure love; consequently, in heaven, there would be no doubt about
the other person’s contrition, and so trust
would not be a problem.
Forgiveness versus
Reconciliation
The second concept concerns the
difference between forgiveness and reconciliation and applies
to the time when you and your enemy are still alive.
Forgiveness
means that you relinquish all hatred
for your enemy. That is, when you are in the place of forgiveness, all desire
for revenge is relinquished; when you are in the place of forgiveness, all
desire for harm to come to your enemy is relinquished. In essence, you achieve
forgiveness when you take the desire for justice out of your own hands and
place justice into God’s hands where it truly belongs. Note that in
doing this you are trusting in God’s perfect
justice, knowing that your enemy will pay for his or her
sins as God sees fit.
|
Let us be careful
here to understand a fundamental point about forgiveness: Acknowledging
and feeling the emotional hurt that you have suffered is a prerequisite to
forgiveness. Hiding your feelings only drives them into the unconscious
where they fester in unconscious anger, making
forgiveness impossible.
Therefore, only
when you have felt your pain, are honest with yourself about it, and have
understood it psychologically and spiritually, can you make the conscious
decision—that is, as an act of will—to lay down your weapons of
revenge and then trust in God’s
justice. |
|
Reconciliation
adds something extra to your forgiveness; that is, after you have forgiven
your enemy, if your enemy
apologizes[1]
to you and makes penance for the offense, then you will be reconciled to
each other. Thus, your forgiveness plus your enemy’s repentance
makes it possible for a relationship of trust to be restored between the
two of you.
Note here that even if your enemy
does not repent, thus preventing any reconciliation, you can still forgive
him, and you can still pray for his eventual
repentance before he dies.
Summary
Altogether, then, that exercise
you have been trying to complete misses the point on both of these concepts.
Perhaps, if you rethink things along the lines that I have just explained,
you might grasp the real spiritual issue in front of
you.
Furthermore, you will then be
able to understand the wound that requires your apology
to your enemy: your hating him rather than praying for his
conversion. [2]
Notes
1. That is, if he actually apologizes to
you; your imagining his apology does not count for anything in regard to
the reconciliation process.
2. In this regard, consider the story of
Maria Goretti.
 Anger
and Forgiveness
Most
of us carry more anger in our hearts than we are capable of admitting even
to ourselves. As a result, we often feel stuck in lives of unfulfilled potential,
unending resentments, and physical illness. In this book, Dr. Richmond explains
the deep psychological implications of anger and forgiveness and shows how
to turn the emotional wounds of daily life into psychological
growth.
Ordering
Information |
|
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
|
|
  
|
If this website has helped
you, then