Forgiveness
by Jean Vanier (This post has been adapted with minor revisions from his book, "Becoming Human")The Greek word for forgiveness is asphesis, which means to liberate, to release from bondage; it means the remission of debt, guilt, and punishment. It is used when the prison door is opened and the prisoner can go free. We humans are called to become free, to free others, to nurture life, to look for the worth and the beauty in each and every one of us, and to make of our world a beautiful garden where each person and each society can create a harvest of flowers and fruits, and so prepare the seeds of peace for tomorrow.
I have talked about becoming free of the inner compulsions towards success, the drive to be admired, and the fear of rejection. When these compulsions and cravings govern our behaviour and prevent us from seeking justice and freedom for others, we are not free. I want to talk about finding freedom from those inner hurts that govern our behaviour and make us act inhumanly towards others.
Some of these hurts have been actively inflicted on us, for example, through verbal or physical abuse. Other wounds come more passively: at certain times, particularly when we were weak and in need, we have felt unappreciated and rejected. In either case, our needs were ignored by those who might have helped bit who passed us by. Our hurts leave wounds in the heartrpushed down and covered over in the recesses of our being. These hurts are at the origin of the barriers that we create.
These barriers and the wounds they cover up prevent healthy belonging because they prevent communication and openness. In order to become truly free, which is to be most human, these barriers have to be removed. Forgiveness is this process of removing barriers; it is the process by which we start to accept and to love those who have hurt us. This is the final stage of inneiliberation.
We react to hurts in different ways. We can be driven to hurt those who have hurt us, to speak evil of those who have spoken evil of us. There are other ways of dealing with hurts. Some of us let the hurt fester hside, creating an attitude of continual dis-ease and discontent with everything and everyone. The hurt that we hide can even turn into feelings of self-deprecation, as if we deserved it, because we have become convinced that we have no value.
Hurts can also create feelings of guilt. There are two types of guilt: psychological guilt and moral guilt. The first is induced in us by others, those who have made us feel that we are without value. Psychologists frequently call this first type of guilt "shame" in order to distinguish it from the second type, the one we induce in ourselves after having done something we consider wrong. Psychological guilt is not the consequence of having hurt someone or of committing a crime; it is the feeling that can overwhelm us when we feel rejected as individuals.
Many years ago John Paul came to l'Arche from a psychiatric hospital. At one point he became quite mentally ill and started to have hallucinations. He moved out of reality and began to live in another world, a situation that was frightening for him as well as for the rest of us. All those who were involved with his care had a meeting with Erol Franko, our psychiatrist at the time. We wanted to understand what had provoked the crisis and how to help John Paul find himself again and rediscover reality. I still remember Dr. Franko's words: "I believe John Paul feels guilty for existing." He reminded us that, because of his disability, this young man had been rejected by his parents, then by his grandparents, and yet again by two family placements. He eventually ended up in a psychiatric hospital before coming to l'Arche. Never in his life had he felt accepted or loved just as he was. He had never felt bonded to anyone. He had always been seen as a nuisance and a disturbance. If we are not loved, then we feel unlovable. This is psychological guilt, which touches us to our core.
Moral guilt and psychological guilt feed into each other. If we feel that we have no worth, it is because we have been told, in one way or another, that this is so. We will then act accordingly: we will hurt others precisely because we know we have no worth and can only do worthless things.
Many of the people with intellectual disabilities come to l'Arche filled with this psychological guilt. They are convinced that they are no good, and that they can do no good. The purpose of the l'Arche communities is to help people move from their broken, negative self-image into a positive one. We try to help them move from a desire to die to a desire to live, from self-hatred to self-love.
These feelings of worthlessness are induced in all of us as children whenever we feel rejected. Thus in childhood the shadow side of our being develops within us, and these feelings surface during moments of depression. To be depressed is to be flooded by feelings that paralyze us and prevent us from getting on with out lives. This psychological guilt is also at the root of our lack of trust in ourselves. Many of us lack trust not just in our ability to do something that demands experience and competence, but in our capacity to love, and to be loved in return.
As I listen to people I discover how many of us are weighed down by guilt. Mothers and fathers feel guilty because they are imperfect parents. Husbands and wives feel guilty because they do not know how to love and care for their partner. Perhaps we all feel guilty because we are not quite who we wanted to become; to that extent all of us are disappointed in ourselves so we disappoint others.
The question, then, is how to free ourselves from the weight of guilt? How can we rediscover the trust and faith that helps us to open up to others ad do something beautiful with out lives? How can mother and child, or husband and wife, liberate one another from the feelings that prevent them from living fully? How can there be an encounter between them that releases a new energy, transforming their hearts? This is the energy the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber refers to in his book I and Thou when he speaks of two people who truly meet together and reveal themselves to each other.
I spoken before about the love that transforms people, and that transformed Claudia, a young woman with severe disabilities in the l'Arche community in Honduras. This love reveals, understands, empowers, celebrates, and helps people move from the desire to die to the desire to live. This love liberates us from the tentacles of psychological guilt which paralyzes us. It is a love that flows from someone who believes in us and wants us to live. But we have to open our hearts to receive this love. We can block it, refuse to believe in it, or not want it at all. Sometimes the desire to die can be overwhelming
Here, I think, is the secret of our inner freedom. We can either welcome or refuse this transforming love. To forgive is to offer this love that liberates people from the powers of moral and psychological guilt. It is the supreme gift, the greatest of gifts, because it is a gift of liberation from all the hurts of the past, hurts that prevent us from living fully and loving others.
Personal Hurts
Let us look at different types of hurt. First, there are personal hurts: one individual making another suffer.
A young university student came to see me. From the way she spoke about men I sensed a lot of pain in her. I asked her to tell me about her relationship with her father. She glared at me: "I hate him!" I wanted to know more. She told me that her father was a philosophy teacher in a Christian school and was greatly loved and respected. When he came home, however, he locked himself up in his room. "He never eats with us," she said. "He never speaks to me. I hate him."
It is not easy for a young woman to feel rejected and slighted by a father who should encourage and confirm her. Her father made her feel she was worthless. His rejection fed into her general sense of rejection and created deep tension, anger, and revolt in her. It was also affecting all her relationships with men. This young woman needed to be liberated from the hatred that was governing her life. It was important for her to start understanding her father, a process that might eventually lead to forgiveness.
When she begins to understand her father and why he acts in that way, she will be on the road to forgiveness. But this forgiveness can only become a true meeting and communion of hearts if her father is willing to reflect on his behaviour, if he realizes how much he has hurt his daughter, and asks her for this gift of forgiveness. Only then could reconciliation, total healing, and liberation take place in both.
Sometimes the essential issue is not understanding, but recognizing that there are blockages in the one who has hurt us that can lead to a refusal to admit guilt. A young woman had been in prison for a number of years because of a man who gave false evidence against her. In prison, she experienced a spiritual transformation through the help of the prison chaplain. One day, the chaplain brought up the issue of forgiving this man who had brought so much hardship on her. "No," she replied, "I could never forgive him; he has hurt me too much. But I pray each day that God may forgive him."
This woman seemingly could not forgive until her persecutor fully repented and asked for the gift of forgiveness. But she also showed that she did not want to be controlled by her hatred for him. Even more, she wanted him to live in truth; she prayed for him. In some cases, it is easier for the victim to move towards this inner liberation than for the oppressor to admit guilt and ask for forgiveness. In other cases, the hurt can be so deep in the victim that complete liberation is a very long and painful process. Think of the Jews who survived the extermination camps, or the Tutsis and Hutus who have lived through the massacres in Rwanda.
Imprisoned in One's Likes and Dislikes
Most of us don't have to deal with the kind of hatred the university student and the woman in jail felt, but we all have sharp likes and dislikes. We discover these as we live with others in family, at work, in a community, or in other groups. We are attracted to some people and we reject others. We hand out praise and condemnation with equal ease. And even if we do not praise or condemn, we do place people in easy categories. Those who belong to another church or political party, or who profess other values are quickly given a label. Those who belong to a different race or social class are assigned a place in the order of the world as we see it. We like to see ourselves at the top of a pyramid; we look down on those who are different; we do not see them as our brothers and sisters. We may not always hate others, but we are very quick to categorize them. As humans, we put up barriers with ease.
But not all of our dislikes about people are groundless. There are those who belittle us. There are others who awaken latent fears. Still others make us feel anxious and uneasy. Some people want to possess us, so we feel constrained in their presence. Others appear as rivals in some domain or another. All of these various dislikes have one thing in common: they spring from the perception of danger to our sense of self.
Likes and dislikes are motivated by our own natural needs and fears. We are attracted to those who seem to affirm and encourage us, who love and admire us. We reject those who do not affirm or encourage us but who judge and condemn. We may not be imprisoned in anything as strong as hate, but our likes and dislikes create equally high walls of prejudice. Behind them we can act as if others do not exist, or as if they do not belong to our common humanity.
To be truly liberated, we have to make an effort to communicate with those we dislike, to try to understand and accept them as they are, and to experience our mutual humanity. This is forgiveness.
Hatred of a Group of People
Then there are the hatreds that communities generate in each other.
In My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love and Forgiveness, the American writer Patricia Raybon writes about how the oppression she felt in the United States had taught her to hate white people. She writes, "I hated them because they have lynched and lied and jailed and poisoned and neglected and discarded and excluded and exploited countless cultures and communities with such blatant intent or indifference as to humanly defy belief or understanding." [Patricia Raybon, My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness (New York: Viking Press, 1996) 4.] She goes on to say that she came to recognize that her hatred, no matter how legitimate and understandable, was eating away her identity and selfrespect. It was blinding her to the gestures of friendship that a white girl in high school offered to her. She discovered that instead of waiting for whites to seek forgiveness for the injustices they had inflicted, she needed to ask for forgiveness for her own hatred, and for her inability to see a white person as a person and not just as part of a race of oppressors.
Hurt can be so painful that some victims create thick walls to protect themselves from more pain. However, if political liberation comes and those who were previously victims become the new masters, there is the danger that, still behind these thick walls, they will become in some ways like the old masters: defensive and aggressive at the same time.
Some of the oppressed, instead of acknowledging their hatred of the oppressor and their desire for revenge, get stuck in feelings of inferiority. Oppression has penetrated their own hearts. Convinced that they are inferior, they remain unable to react or to struggle for their rights. They become their own oppressors.
In order to break the chain of violence and oppression that continues to rule in our world, oppressed people have to find liberation from these two attitudes: hatred towards others and hatred towards themselves. Only in this way, I believe, can the oppressed of the world find inner freedom and peace.
In 1996, when I visited Rwanda, a young woman told me that seventy-five members of her family had been massacred. “ There is so much hate in my heart I do not know what to do with it," she said. "People are talking about reconciliation, but nobody has asked me to forgive them." Crimes of oppression and massacre leave deep wounds. Can they ever be healed? In order to be free, this-woman needed help to accept her feelings of anger and revolt, reactions that made her feel guilty. But are these not natural, healthy reactions? It is important to express them. If this woman had not reacted, but had accepted passively the horror and injustices suffered by her people, wouldn't there be something wrong? Apathy in these circumstances would be a sign of depression and of a refusal to live. But this woman was able to say that she did not want revenge on those who had killed her family. She had seen enough killing.
Forgiveness is unilateral. It begins as the victim, with new-found strength, refuses to seek revenge, or, as in the case of the woman in prison, prays that the oppressor may change, refind truth, and admit his evil ways. Forgiveness is then to have hope for the oppressors, to believe in their humanity hidden under all their brokenness. It becomes reconciliation and a moment of communion of hearts if and when they seek forgiveness.
Liberating Ourselves from the Power of Hatred
A friend of mine wrote to me about her grandfather, an Australian who had served in the First World War. He had been gassed by the German army and was left permanently impaired. He remained terribly bitter towards all Germans. His bitterness poisoned his whole family and was passed down to the third generation, to my friend. In her letter she told me how she herself had absorbed her grandfather's attitudes and been influenced by the language he used to describe the German people: "Those wretched Huns!" he called them. It took a long time for this woman to learn to overcome her grandfather's legacy. It was a slow process to actively reject the attitudes inculcated in her at a young age. "All my life," she wrote, "I've tried to get rid of the prejudice against German people that has been programmed into me." Our hearts can be poisoned by words of hate and by the heritage of unresolved bitterness.
That is the reality of how human beings operate unless we choose forgiveness, both personally and as a community.
My friend continued in her letter, "I always think of that principle used by native North Americans, that in all important decisions, one must reflect on the consequences for the following generations...There must be millions and millions of us who carry the wounds of unforgiveness unto the third and fourth generations — or longer! The world carries this, and future wars or future peace depend on what we do with it."
Love of Enemies
The love of one's enemy is at the heart of the Christian message. Jesus says forcefully, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, speak well of those who speak badly of you, and pray for those who abuse you" (Luke 6:27-28).
Jesus' words were spoken in Galilee, near Lake Tiberias. For many centuries the Jewish people had been overrun by foreign powers: first by the Babylonians, then by the Persians, later by the Greeks, and then by the Romans. The Jewish people, naturally, hated this foreign domination. Crushed in their dignity and freedom, they sought liberation, often through violent means. "Freedom fighters" might be the term the Jewish people would have used to describe those who resorted to violence. The Romans, of course, would have considered them terrorists.
Sometime after the birth of Christ, a certain Judas Ezechias led a powerful revolt in Galilee that was crushed by the Romans. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century, tells us that in retaliation for the revolt, the Romans crucified two thousand Galileans. And now Jesus is telling the Galileans to love their enemies! To pray for those who abuse and crush them! Imagine their anger! "No! I hate the Romans! I want to kill them!" you can hear them say. "They crucified my father, my brother, my son, my uncle__ " When we read Jesus' words in such a context an invitation to love our enemies might seem idealistic or even sentimental. For the Galileans, Jesus' words could seem like a provocation, the words of a coward, someone frightened of violence and confrontation. They might even think of Jesus as an agent of the Romans tryihg to dampen the true aspirations of the Jewish people for freedom.
But Jesus was neither provocative nor idealistic. He was making a promise of transformation and inner liberation that, if it had been received, could have transformed the history of the world.
The Dalai Lama points out the same truth in Buddhism:
...the Bodhisattva affirms the importance of acquiring the right attitude towards your enemy. If you know how to develop a just attitude, your enemies become your spiritual masters, because their presence gives you an opportunity to grow in tolerance, patience, and understanding. As you acquire more patience and tolerance, it will be easier to develop your capacity for compassion, and thanks to that, your altruism. [Dalai Lama, Le Dalai-Lama Parle de Jesus (Paris: Editions Brepols) 44-45.]
In the Koran, forgiveness of enemies is also important:
It may be that Allah will grant love and friendship between you and those whom ye now hold as enemies. For Allah has power over all things; and Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful. [Surah 60:7, New Revised Edition.]
In order for humanity to break the chain of violence and hatred transmitted from generation to generation, to go from chaos to order, we have to take the words of Jesus, the Dalai Lama, and Muhammad seriously.
"Enemy" is a very strong word. It generally refers to those who are in a state of war. It can also be used to describe groups or individuals who oppress others, who shackle their freedom and prevent their growth. Because "enemy" is such a strong term, it's easy for us to deny that we have enemies. But when Christ, the Dalai Lama, and Muhammad all speak of enemies, they refer to something that can be much simpler, much closer to home. An enemy is someone who stands in the way of our freedom, dignity, and capacity to grow and to love, someone whom we avoid or with whom we refuse to communicate.
A woman spoke to me about her husband: "He is happy when I look after the house and children. He is happy when I cook good food and wash his clothes. He uses me sexually. But he never listens to me or treats me like a person, asking me for my opinion or advice. A lot of anger is coming up in me and I do not know what to do with it all." Her husband was becoming her enemy because he was crushing her dignity and her sense of self-worth. Dislike can grow to annoyance; annoyance can blossom into anger; anger can turn to hatred. We have to be careful not to let the seeds of our dislike grow and multiply. The words of Jesus and of other spiritual masters apply even to those mildest of negative feelings, our dislikes. To become truly free, to work for unity and peace, we have to work at all these relationships that cause us pain and disease.
This woman's husband obviously needed to change. But didn't she need to change too? She had spent too much time obeying his whims and fancies; she had accepted being his servant just to please him. This woman had to discover and own her fears and flaws — all that led her to grant an unhealthy power to her husband. There is no question that both wife and husband needed help. For that woman, forgiving did not mean accepting a controlling, oppressive husband; it meant that she had to become more fully herself, standing up and affirming her own selfhood — with love, of course, and not out of anger — and then be ready to accept the consequences. To love one's enemy is not just a spiritual reality, but something essentially human.
All of us who think about peace, or even about the simple act of being human and of the process of growing towards maturity, must take this call to love our enemies seriously. This is a call to change, to no longer be controlled by our hurts and fears, but to enter instead into a truer relationship with those whom we dislike.
But to love those we dislike or even hate seems impossible. How can we love our enemies? Will they not just eat us up if we appear weak and vulnerable before them? How can we be open to someone who wants to curb our lives and our freedom? Life protects itself from death. If we see a stone hurtling towards us, don't we instinctively protect ourselves? How can we be open to someone who we think wants to hurt us physically or psychologically? Don't we need to protect ourselves when we are confronted by someone who, consciously or unconsciously, wants to prevent us, in some way, from blossoming forth and radiating life?
Awareness at the Heart of Forgiveness
Forgiveness begins as we become aware of our fears and barriers. Patricia Raybon, who got over her hatred of all white people, and my Australian friend, who learned to overcome her hatred of all things German, could both start opening up to their "enemy" only when they realized how bitterness and anger were gripping them.
Hatred is like a gangrene: it eats a person up. All our refusals to communicate with others and to be open to them enclose us in a prison. But how do we move from accusation, no matter how legitimate it may be, to openness and acceptance, and even a desire to see our enemies liberated from their fears and selfishness? The process begins when we become aware of the walls within us that are built on fear and unconscious anger, and when we become aware of how our openness towards those we call friends can be a protection from anguish and loneliness.
This unveiling of our brokenness, fears, and faults does not come easily, precisely because it can enhance our feelings of worthlessness and lack of self-confidence. Instead of helping us to grow in love and forgiveness and openness, this process can close us up in subtle forms of depression and inertia. Where do we find the inner force that is stronger than our fears and barriers, that can liberate us from anger and dislikes and open us up to those who have hurt us?
I believe that the forces of life and the desires for communion are greater than the forces of death and hatred. At some moment in each of our lives there is an event that calls us to freedom and openness. At that point of epiphany we want to get out of the hole of depression and anger. We realize that we are imprisoned in ourselves or in our group, finding it difficult to relate to others.
A few years ago, Fred, a man in prison, wrote to me. He told me that he had committed a serious crime and had gone to jail. One day he became violent with other inmates and ended up in solitary confinement. Aware that he had lost everything — his family, his work, his mobility, as well as his dignity and self-respect — he wanted to die. But suddenly there rose up in him what he called "tiny stars of love," an urge to find himself and to rediscover love. It was a moment of grace. For many of us, it is only when we touch rock bottom, when all seems lost, that this tiny light of hope begins to shine. We become aware not only of all the darkness in ourselves, but also of the light of hope. At that moment an ascension begins.
To open up to others implies not only an awareness of our own fears, darkness, and brokenness, but also the presence of a light, a love, and an energy that will give us the desire to move forwards to openness and not let ourselves be controlled by the darkness.
The Desire to Be Liberated from Fear
The birth of this desire for liberation is a blessed moment, a moment of grace. It can happen when we meet those who are truly free and who sing their freedom. They reveal to us that freedom is possible and that it brings with it a blossoming of the heart in peace and joy. This desire for liberation may happen when we meet someone who loves and trusts us just as we are, and who sees, through our fears and inhibitions, all that is latent in us and can blossom forth with time. Love calls us forth and, like a magnet, attracts new and deep energies within.
This desire for liberation can come through dreams, through moments of inner quietness, or when we experience the presence of God loving us just as we are. In these "blessed moments," a consciousness of who we are rises up: we become aware of our importance, our blessedness, deeper than all the hurts that have governed our lives. For an instant we are no longer controlled by fear, anger, indifference, vengeance, or feelings of despair and unworthiness. A little light is bom, a desire to be. Hope returns to our lives.
In the Bible, the prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a whole valley filled with dead bones. These bones represented the people of Israel who were saying, "Our bones are dry; we have no hope. All is over for us." Then, in the name of God, Ezekiel called them forth and spoke to them: "O my people, now I am going to open your graves. I will bring you up from your graves...I will put my Spirit in you and you will live" (Ezekiel 37:11-14). There are blessed moments when we feel called to rise up from the dirt and despair of our lives and to become fully alive.
Principles and Steps Towards Forgiveness
I would suggest that there are three basic principles underlying forgiveness in the move towards reconciliation.
Principle 1: There can be no forgiveness of ourselves or of others unless we believe that we are all part of a common humanity. What this means in practical terms is that no one individual, no one group is superior to others. To say that we are all equally important seems a redundancy, and yet how often do any of us act as if it were true? How often has history demonstrated this human truth — that we are equal? Not often. So it needs to be said again and again. We may be different in race, culture, religion, and capacities, but we are all the same, with vulnerable hearts, the need to love and be loved, the needs to grow, to develop our capacities, and to find our place in the world. We all need to find ourselves of value. We are all the same because throughout our lives we have, every one of us, been hurt in one way or another. Fears have been implanted in us; we have difficulty relating to others; there is a certain chaos of anguish and violence within us.
In order to enter the path of forgiveness, we have to lose our feelings of both superiority and inferiority. Each of us has hurt another, each of us has been hurt. And so we must own and take responsibility for our lives as well as for the future. We are all called upon to stand up and take our place freely in the world.
Principle 2: To forgive means to believe that each of us can evolve and change, that human redemption is possible. We often lock people up in ready-made judgements: "He is a thief; she is disabled; he is schizophrenic." Perhaps this one did steal something, perhaps that one is disabled, but they are more than this. They are people who, if loved, helped, and trusted, can in some small way recognize their faults and their brokenness and can grow in humanity, in inner freedom, to do little acts of love.
Principle 3: To forgive means to yearn for unity and peace. Unity is the ultimate treasure. It is the place where, in the garden of humanity, each one of us can grow, bear fruit, and give life. That is what we all yearn for. When the father in the parable of the prodigal son sees his dishevelled son coming back to him thin, dirty, and unshaven, he rushes out and kisses him. No judgement, no disagreeable remarks, not even "I forgive you." What the father yearned for was to be with his son again, to live a communion of hearts with him. His desire to be with his son was far greater than any hurts he may have suffered.
When someone loves deeply, forgiveness is evident. A lover wants to be with the loved one, that is all. If we love and want all people to be free to bear fruit, we will be a people of forgiveness. We will no longer be governed by our inner hurts or need to prove our worth; we will yearn for the growth of all people in peace and unity. To be a peacemaker and work for unity is a struggle. It is not easy to accept forgiveness or to forgive. It is not easy to shed our self-centredness. It is not easy to react against inertia or those feelings of fear that prevent us from entering into conflict.
At the heart of the process of forgiveness is the desire to be liberated from negative passions, from sharp dislikes and hatred. This is a desire that starts us on the road to true forgiveness. Having proposed three principles of forgiveness, let me now propose five steps.
The first step is the refusal to seek revenge. No more "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
The second step is the genuine, heartfelt hope that the oppressor be liberated. The victim cannot change the heart that is filled with fear and hate, but one may hope and pray that one day the oppressor's heart of stone may become a heart of flesh.
The third step is the desire to understand the oppressors: how and why their indifference or hardness of heart has developed, and how they might be liberated.
The fourth step is the recognition of our own darkness. We, too, have hurt people and perhaps have contributed to the hardness of the oppressors.
The fifth step is patience. It takes time for a victim to be freed from blockage and hatred; it takes time for an oppressor to evolve and to change.
Changing the Heart of the Oppressors
Reconciliation is a bilateral affair; it is the completion of the forgiveness process, the coming together of the oppressed and the oppressor, each one accepting the other, each acknowledging their fears and hatreds, each accepting that the path of mutual love is the only way out of a world of conflict.
It is difficult, however, for the oppressor to admit guilt. Let us try to understand why. It might help us both to exercise authority with greater sensitivity and to walk the road of forgiveness.
Power has a direction: it is always exercised downwards, towards the weak. One manifestation of power in the family, for example, is the authority of parents over their children. But power is quickly equated with what is right.Don't most parents feel that they know what is best for their children? Don't all those in positions of power think they know what is right and seem incapable of accepting any kind of criticism? The exercise of power gives people a sense of identity and worth.
Those in authority who doubt or waver in their decisions do not inspire confidence. In many ways, the mighty feel that they are in the image of the Almighty, that they should not be questioned, only obeyed. Yet we are all broken, turned in on ourselves, self-centred, needing success, power, and recognition. So few of us have the necessary maturity and wisdom to exercise authority in a loving and freeing way through what we might call "servant leadership," helping people to find trust in themselves and to grow in freedom.
It is difficult for those with power to allow themselves to be governed by the superior law of love. It is equally difficult for them to admit that they have hurt those who are weaker. We all have the capacity to push all the wrongs we have committed into the secret recesses of our being. We develop sophisticated techniques to silence the conscience and erase every trace of remorse. Psychologists have described this ability to render ourselves numb; Freud called it a "protective shield" that we create around threatening feelings.
Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz, a German theologian who has worked with the World Council of Churches, wrote a remarkable book called The Art of Forgiveness. In it he says that people generally manage to forget the wrongs they have done. "There can be no forgiveness," he says, "where perpetrators, whether individuals or collective, lack the courage to disarm themselves in front of the victims. This is a painful and demanding act." [Geiko Miiller-Fahrenholz, The Art of Forgiveness: Theological Reflections on Healing and Reconciliation (Geneva: wcc Publications, 1997) 26.]
When those who have created a sense of self-worth and personal identity through the exercise of power finally reveal their wrongs, forswear the evil in themselves, and ask their victims for forgiveness, then they renounce the supremacy that power presumes and accept the loss of their self-esteem. It is as if they have become naked and vulnerable. As they break through the protective shield that gave them a false sense of self-worth, anguish and a feeling of inner death can arise. But, at the same time, they are liberated from guilt and develop a new, deeper sense of self-worth. That is why the emotions can be so great when oppressor and oppressed are reconciled.
It is difficult to exercise authority always with wisdom and with a desire to serve. I know I sometimes stifled others in the community of l'Arche when I was the leader. It is difficult to admit our faults and the wrongs we may have done. It is even more difficult when these wrongs are serious and we have severely wounded others.
It is also difficult for those who trust their leaders to believe that they might have done wrong. Many of us are programed to obey and not to question or criticize. There is a real growth in us when we recognize such wrongs and take action to correct them.
The Gentle Power of God
For true reconciliation, in most cases wt need a force that transcends both the oppressed and oppressor. Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz writes:
In the last resort, humans cannot define what constitutes their humanity. It transcends them. As we work for forgiveness, we are called to reflect that as human beings, each of us is created in the image of God, the most Merciful. This is our calling, our mission: to become mirrors of mercy. [Muller-Fahrenholz, xi.]We all tend to wear masks, the mask of superiority or of inferiority, the mask of worthiness or of victim. It is not easy to let our masks come off and to discover the little child inside us who yearns for love and for light, and who fears being hurt. Forgiveness, however, implies the removal of these masks, an acceptance of who we really are: that we have been hurt, and that we have hurt others.
Forgiveness of ourselves, then, implies a acceptance of our true value. The loss of a false self-image, if it is an image of superiority, or the need to hide in our brokenness can bring anguish and inner pain. We can truly accept this pain if we discover our true self beneath all the masks and realize that if we are broken, we are also more beautiful than we ever dared to suspect. When we realize our brokenness, we do not have to fall into depresion; when we see our true beauty, we do not have to become proud as peacocks. Seeing our own brokeness and beauty allows us to recognize, hidden under the brokeness and self centredness of others, their beauty, their value, and their sacredness. This discovery is sometimes a leap in the dark, a blessed moment, a moment of grace, and a moment of enlightenment that comes in a meeting with the God of Love, who reveals to us that we are beloved and so is everyone else.
As the desire grows in us to be whole and to struggle for this wholeness in ourselves, in others, in our community, and in the world, and as we desire to be free in order to free others, a new energy is bom within us, an energy that flows from God. It is as though we are crossing the Red Sea from slavery to freedom. We can start to live the pain of loss and accept anguish because a new love and a new consciousness of self are being given to us.
Jesus' invitation to love one's enemies must have appeared dangerously utopian to the Galileans. Maybe it was only when they saw him standing up to the religious leaders of his day, pursuing a courageous and dangerous course for love, truth, and the liberation of the oppressed, that some began to understand that this was a new way to struggle for peace and to break the seemingly unending chain of human oppression. Loving our enemies means to see them as individuals who are perhaps caught up in a cycle of fear, and of oppression, and in their character traits and need for power, but who are individuals nonetheless and are, beneath everything, sacred and precious. Their secret person is hidden behind walls of fear. To love them is to hope and yearn that instead of living a form of self-destruction, locked up in their own pride and power, they can be liberated.
If, the night before he died, Jesus knelt down humbly before his disciples, washed their feet, and called them to do the same, was it not because he knew how power can be used to crush and enslave, rather than to empower and free? In order to empower and free others, we need to discover this new force of love and communion, which comes from God.
This vision of love seems humanly impossible. One day in 1944, in the Auschwitz concentration camp, a group of men stood waiting to be executed. Suddenly, a man stepped forward and volunteered to replace one of the men who had been condemned to death. He was Father Maximilian Kolbe. The commandant was startled, but he allowed the priest to take the man's place. So Father Kolbe joined the group of men in the bunker, where he helped each one to make the final passage of death, When all had died and he was alone the guards came and killed him too. By doing this, Father Kolbe was bearing witness that love is stronger than death.
More recently, in 1996 in Algeria, the trappist monk Christian de Cherge was murdered along with six of his brother monks. They had refused to leave their monastery in a dangerous and unprotected area in order to bear witness to the presence of God, who loves every human being whatever their religion. Christian left a document with his mother to be opened when he died. In it he gives thanks:
In this "thank you," which is said for everything in my life, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today...and you also, friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you too, I want to say this "thank you" and a Dieu [to God], whom I have seen through you. May we meet again in Paradise as two blessed and good thieves, if that is what God, the Father of us both, wants. Amen! Inch'Allah!" [Christian de Cherge, "Testament," The Tablet 8 June 1996.]
We Work and God Works
Forgiveness, the act of loving my enemy, like forgiveness of self, is not a sudden event, a rapid change of heart. Most of the time it is a long process that begins with the desire to be free, to accept ourselves as we are, and to grow in the love of those who are different and those who have hurt us or appear as rivals. It is the process of getting out of the prison of our likes and dislikes, our hatreds and fears, and walking to freedom and compassion. In the process of liberation, there may still be inhibitions, resentments, and anger, but there is also this growing desire to be free.
I believe that this desire comes from God, who lives deep within each of us, but it must be coupled with our own efforts, for example, to stop rejoicing when people talk badly of our enemies, to stop criticizing and belittling others, and to hold onto our poison-spreading tongues. It might mean befriending those who befriend our enemy, so that we might begin to understand our enemy. It also means struggling against feeling like victims and so hiding behind fear, depression, anger, and inertia.
To understand the enemy both within us and outside of us is an important part of forgiveness. If we work at it, God works in us, and, one day, resentments start to disappear. Forgiveness is to begin to love and to accept ourselves, trying to understand and appreciate all that is valuable in us all, praying that what blocks us all from being free may break like a dam, so that what is most precious in us may flow forth. That is the final prayer of Jesus: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).
To forgive is to break down the walls of hostility that separate us, and to bring each other out of the anguish of loneliness, fear, and chaos into communion and oneness. This communion is bom from mutual trust and acceptance, and the freedom to be ourselves in our uniqueness and beauty, the freedom to exercise our gifts. We are no longer contained and held back by fear, prejudices, or the need to prove ourselves.
So the sense of belonging that is necessary for the opening of our hearts is bom when we walk together, needing each other, accompanying one another whether we are weak or strong, capable or not. This belonging will not bring feelings of superiority if we are walking towardsinner freedom. It will not seek to exclude but to include the weak, the needy, and the different, for they have a secret power that opens up people's hearts and leads them to compassion and mutual trust. This belonging becomes a song of gratitude for each one of us.
Of course, all this takes time. But are we not all called to take this journey if we want to become fully human, to conquer divisions and oppression, and to work for peace? If each one of us today begins this journey and has the courage to forgive and be forgiven, we will no longer be governed by past hurts. Wherever we may be — in our families, our work places, with friends, or in places of worship or of leisure —we can rise up and become agents of a new land. But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time.
Source: Jean Vanier. "Chapter 5: Forgiveness" in "Becoming Human." 10th Anniversary Edition (New York: Paulist Press, 2008) 135-163.
