The Art Of Forgiveness

How can we learn to forgive? Forgiveness is probably the hardest part of our journey on the road of Christ. It is something that our human nature seems to want to fight. We tend to hold on to these feelings of hurt, of anger, of revenge, of bitterness. Our souls may tell us to follow the footsteps of grace and forgive, but our emotions tend to pull us toward this other path. Sometimes we even reason that we have a right to hold a grudge.
   But these feelings that cause us to deny forgiveness really only hurt ourselves. If we do not forgive, the other people involved are not the ones losing, we are. This bitterness, anger and their fellow feelings ruin our lives, make us feel miserable and ill tempered toward not only those whom we should forgive, but also others who we come into contact with in our daily lives. These feelings slowly eat away at the peace of our soul, leaving us in unrest and actually causing our bodies to react in sickness. So how can we not forgive?
  Jesus taught forgiveness by offering it to people who were total outcasts from society. The unforgivable, if you will. And yet we can have a hard time forgiving loved ones, close friends, people who we really care about. This should be easier than forgiving strangers whom no one accepts. But we fail time and time again.
  I place my hope in a God of patience and compassion. A God that knows how hard it is for us. A God that is ready to forgive even when we are not. A God who experienced our humanness and is always there to guide us on the correct path. His path. The path of love. The path of compassion. The path of forgiveness. I accept the fact that I may try and fail and I know that God accepts that fact too. But I also accept the fact that through my baptism I made a commitment to continue to try and get it right. And I know that our God accepts that fact as well. All the baptized accept this role. And during lent, it can become very evident how short we have fallen in achieving this goal. But we can transform ourselves. And lent offers a special time to try and make that happen. And perhaps, as Easter Sunday approaches, we can find more peace, more love, because we have learned the art of forgiveness.