Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Right now, there’s a lot in the world that seems unforgivable, isn’t there? And isn’t it nice to have that get out clause from Our Lord?
For they know not what they do. But what if they DO know? The Trump voter, the Brexit voter, all who voted their spitting rage, hatred of other, leaning into ‘rivers of blood’ style xenophobia and racism, then disingenuously stood back, claiming ‘economic anxiety’ or ‘sovereignty’ while vulnerable groups and entire nations suffered the consequences.
How delicious was it, then, when they began to suffer? When steelworkers didn’t get those promised jobs? When they suddenly realised they were going to lose their healthcare? When they realised that whoops, much of the funding that held up their deprived communities came from the EU? How tempting to say, ‘No job from Trump? What, now you want a handout from the social safety net you wanted to slash? Here’s a bowl, there’s the street.’ Or ‘Oh, the radioactive isotopes your child needs are in short supply because we’re out of Euratom? Well, they don’t deserve to suffer, but because you decided that they and every other cancer patient should, so you could vote your hate, you deserve every ounce of unmitigated suffering coming your way.’ Or a personal favourite, ‘I wouldn’t cross the street to pour a glass of water on him if his guts were on fire, but if I had accelerant, I might just run.’
After all, Jesus gave us that out, right? No forgiveness because they knew exactly what they did. Never mind that denying them aid and forcing them to beg or using a child’s suffering as a vehicle for revenge makes us uncomfortably like them.
They know what they do. Just like my father did, just like my uncle did. No quarter given. They knew.
Don Henley’s 1989 song, The Heart of the Matter, nudges at that certainty:
These times are so uncertain
There's a yearning undefined
People filled with rage
Times so very like our own. But wait. A yearning undefined? People don’t know what they want? And what do we know about ourselves filled with rage, in the grip of that inferno of anger, aware of nothing but the object of our hate and our need to tear it down, completely blinded to everything else from the people around us to the consequences of our vengeance? Do we know what we do then?
And if not, what about them? How do we arrange those three words? They do know or…do they know? Now not only are the times uncertain, so are we.
Henley goes on:
We all need a little tenderness
Or how can love survive in such a graceless age?
Tenderness, which might lead to compassion and forgiveness? Don, who do you think I am? Our Lady? Jesus? Thanks for the lofty thoughts, but where are we supposed to start?
Let us begin by teasing out what forgiveness actually is: it is not forgetfulness. It does not allow someone to hurt us over and over again. It does not deny that a wrong was committed – for if nothing was wrong, there would be nothing to forgive. Forgiveness does not ignore the degree of the offence or the hurt caused. Forgiveness does not forgo consequences: reparation, loss of relationship, withdrawal of privileges. Forgiveness is not reconciliation, though it may open the door to it.
Forgiveness is rooted in the Latin perdonare, later in the Germanic for and giefan, which mean ‘to give completely, without reservation’. So forgiveness is completely giving release from retribution. Forgiveness is about letting go of the anger and ensuing bitterness about what happened to us. Forgiveness is about, over time, being able to be less angry, then neutral, then perhaps being able to wish the other well, even if the relationship never resumes. Above all, forgiveness is a process, not a fixed point.
Unforgiveness freezes us, locking us in stasis, making it impossible to move or grow. So perhaps if we cannot begin by asking to be able to forgive, we might be able to begin with these words from the Veni, Sancte Spiritus: melt the frozen, warm the chill.
The thaw often begins with allowing feelings beneath the frozen anger of unforgiveness to surface, the moving water of tears of pain, grief, betrayal, loss, but also the water of life: I'm learning to live without you now - but I miss you sometimes. For example, my father is an emotional sadist with a tendency to physically lash out, veering between a complete lack of affect and towering rage. When I told him his brother had sexually abused me for 4 years, he had exactly 6 words: It doesn’t matter; it's not important. Plenty of pain, grief, and betrayal there. Plenty of reason for a hard, frozen exterior to survive him. So it took me decades to come to the surprising realisation that tearing myself away from him was not painless and didn’t bring unmitigated relief and happiness. I found myself grieving, empty, bleeding, and yes, missing - not him, per se, but a father, one who knew and loved me from the moment my arrival on this planet was expected – a realisation that propelled me towards letting go – and healing.
So the first step in the process of forgiveness is acknowledging that we miss what is ruptured, our hurt and its depth, listening to it, making space for it, letting the running water cleanse it, and bandaging – or protecting – it while it heals. The next step is beautifully summed up in the line:
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I’d figured out, I have to learn again.
We must have the courage to be curious, to be uncertain. To look again at what happened, to wonder what I missed, if what I thought I saw was the whole story. I missed the horror and trauma of Partition till I came to the UK and saw the documentaries. For decades, I didn’t know my father had lost 2 sisters and had been so close to one he never again said her name after she died. That knowledge made me realise how little I understood the man I’d grown up with, which allowed for a sea change in perception when I talked to a friend after seeing a picture of my father at 20:
Me: You know, he might have been saved. Here, he just looks wary, sad – angry, yes, but not irrevocably so. (Friend: Mmmmmm.) That just doesn’t jibe with the man I grew up with. You know what else doesn’t? (Mmmmm?) There was this time my cousin brought her baby girl with her, and my father just grabbed the baby, held her tight, closed his eyes and wouldn’t let go. I was like, hey, I WAS HERE, REMEMBER? WHAT ABOUT ME?
Friend: I’ve wondered about that since you first told me. Do you want to hear what I think? (Of course.) What if it wasn’t that you were unlovable or that he was incapable of loving you? What if he saw this baby girl and didn’t dare love her? And what if you grew up more and more like his sister, then everything came into play – the fear, the grief, the rage, and he had to push you away? Or he had to try to make you not like her?
What if indeed. And suddenly, all the things I thought I knew, I was learning again. That staying open, that willingness to give up the story we tell over and over, that admission that maybe it’s more complicated may feel frightening, even blasphemous, if we subscribe to a theology where we believe G-d has spoken His final word or if we’ve come to religion for the exoskeleton of certainty. But we must remember what G-d’s final word said as He ascended: Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. He is here, working with us, through us, to redeem His creation.
And He redeems us by adding that meltwater, the water of our tears, to our clay and reshaping us, even perhaps making it possible to look at an incredibly painful situation and reflect:
I thought of all the bad luck
And the struggles we went through
And how I lost me and you lost you
Because perpetrator or wounded in any situation, we are all lost. Not one of us, no matter how much we plan, how good we are at looking into the future and gauging consequences, how many pro and con lists we make before a decision, know what we do, because we cannot see it all. Not you, not me, not the Trump or Brexit voter, not the colleague or family member who makes you consider jail time, not my father, not Judas. Maybe a little tenderness, such as that we would give a child, is in order.
To put it another way, as Rachel Remen relates what a rabbi once said on Yom Kippur after his 1 year old daughter grabbed his nose, his tie, and his glasses during his sermon: “Think about it. Is there anything she could do that you could not forgive her for? And when does that stop? When does it get hard to forgive? At three? At seven? At fourteen? At thirty-five? How old does someone have to be before you forget that everyone is a child of G-d?”
And speaking of children of G-d, it’s time to get back to his Son. What a week he has had: adored on his arrival in Jerusalem, betrayed by one of his own, denied by the man he planned to be the rock on which to build His church, agonised by doubt, mocked and spat upon by those he preached to and healed, feeling abandoned by everyone, even His Father. What must have been going through his head as he was stripped, beaten, carrying and then nailed to the cross? I can’t help but wonder, before this first word passed his lips, if it was something very similar to Don Henley’s reflection on the subject:
I've been trying to get down
To the heart of the matter
But everything changes
And my friends seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore.
