Forgiveness
is for the Victim. It is permission to
let go of the emotional baggage that is weighing you down. Monsignor Romano Guardini, in a reading from
Magnificat, p. 79-80, explains what I’m beginning to see. We react like animals, i.e., strike
back. That’s our first reaction. But we are human beings and need to overcome
that first primitive instinct.
Creatures are so ordered that the
preservation of the one depends on the destruction of the other…He who injures
me or takes something valuable from me is my enemy, and all my reactions of
distrust, fear, and repulsion rise up against him…Here forgiveness would mean
first that I relinquish the clear and apparently only sure defense of natural
animosity; second, that I overcome fear and risk defenselessness, convinced
that the enemy can do nothing against my intrinsic self…But the crux of the
matter is forgiveness, a profound and weighty thing. Its prerequisite is the courage that springs
from a deep sense of intimate security, and which, as experience has proved, is
usually justified, for the genuine pardoner actually is stronger than the
fear-ridden hater.
Yes, ….what
Monsignor Guardini says.
