Forgiveness

Our Lord, through the Holy Scriptures, incessantly solicits us to love. Love is present in our heart only when in our soul is not present the mortal sin, but the grace, which is given to us and is nourished by the Sacraments. For this reason the Mother of the Eucharist has often warmly invited us, if our soul was in a state of mortal sin, to quickly ask God's forgiveness by approaching the sacrament of Confession in order to acquire the grace again, and has invited us to frequently confess to nourish it.

We are accustomed to see this very important sacrament shrouded in the twilight or in darkness, because, when we approach the confession, our soul is shrouded by the shadow of sin. Instead, we have to learn to think about the confession as it was shrouded and illuminated by the Easter light of resurrection. Jesus Christ established the sacrament of forgiveness in the day of his resurrection, when, by appearing to the apostles in the cenacle, he breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20,22-23), and just through confession the soul, dead due to the mortal sin, rises again to God's grace. The breath symbolizes the presence of the Holy Spirit in the apostles who exercise the task, exclusive to God, to remit sins and in the same time underlines the presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the one who starts to live again in a state of grace, by receiving God's forgiveness. The presence of the Spirit of God serves the man giving the absolution to have the light necessary to guide the soul, but also the man who is absolved to have the strength to put into practice the commitment to follow Christ. At the moment of accusation of our sins and of our repentance, Christ appears to each of us as to the apostles in the cenacle: He allows us to see his wounds and the pierced side to remind us that we became people of his conquer, through his death and resurrection. As Christ died and, once risen, appeared again to his disciples, so we unite ourselves with Christ's resurrection every time we are spiritually dead, because of the mortal sin, and beg for our Lord's forgiveness through the sacrament of Confession.

The Mystic Body of Christ is formed only by people who are in a state of grace and in the condition pointed out by Jesus: "I am the vine, you are the branches". As both in the vine and the branches the same sap, the grace, flows through, when we receive God's forgiveness, we reconcile ourselves not only with the Father, but with our brothers as well, with whom our sin severed our spiritual union. So the Confession exercises an important part in the circle of an actual community.

Each of us may be not only in the condition of the man asking God's forgiveness, but also of the man who has to grant his pardon to a brother who says: "I have made a mistake, I ask your pardon". Forgiveness is a virtue the Christian has to practise always with coherence, patience and constancy although it is often presented in a sweetened way. Forgiveness has a dynamics unfolding over two fundamental moments.

At first we, still suffering because we have been offended by one of our brothers, have to release our heart from the poison of hatred and revenge, even the one that is manifested through thoughts and emotions, since every desire to cause evil pollutes our soul, being in conflict with the law of love and charity. In a second moment, even if we have forgiven our brother, we have to make him understand that he has made a mistake, by practising towards him the brotherly correction. Our manners must never be mawkish and, if necessary, it may come to the point to detach from him.

From the brother's side there must be the commitment to amend himself, but through our actions we have to put him in the condition of amending himself, so he may ask for God's forgiveness and ours as well. The offending man becomes subject of our prayer and suffering and we have to do everything possible to recover our brother, without closing our eyes on the gravity of his failure. What should be most important for us is that he may save his soul even if it means the birth of tensions and conflicts. To this we may add what Our Lady said many times: the brotherly correction and then the pardon doesn't have to be practised only among people of the same rank, but with everybody, with superiors and subordinates. We must not stop before a superior making a mistake: we forgive him, but we cannot say, by the way we behave that he has not made a mistake, just because he is a superior of ours; we must practise the brotherly correction and place the person in the condition to amend himself and to ask for forgiveness.

Each one of us has to always plead for God's mercy for us and for our brothers and God exercises his endless mercy only when the sinner, even if he has committed the most serious sin, behaves as the prodigal son, coming back to his father and saying: "I am no longer worth to be your son, deal with me as one of your servants at least and take me in your home".

Forgiveness is a strong commitment and only those who really love are able to forgive and comply with the dynamics of forgiveness. The Mother of the Eucharist, knowing our difficulties and weaknesses, in one of the first letters of God she brought to our community, has given valuable teachings concerning forgiveness: "When someone offends you and you are not able to forgive, think how many times Jesus was offended and slandered and He always forgave up to the cross, when He said: "Father, forgive them, as they do not know what they are doing". I invite you to pray, because only with prayer one finds the strength to forgive those people who make you suffer" (Letter of God of November 26, 1988). This is the teaching of Christianity, upon which we are called to bear witness; it is up to us to put it into practice, guided by God's Word and supported by his grace.