The art of forgiving

Part of our unwillingness to forgive is due to our unreadiness to accept that we have faults and failings like everyone else. It is created and fed by unacknowledged perfectionism. For various reasons - an inability to take failure, a need to be above criticism - we expect too much of ourselves and therefore too much of other people, too much of the Church, too much of life altogether, so that it kicks back in one disappointment after another. It would be good if we could make a pact with ourselves not to blame ourselves, or others, or life, for not meeting the hunger for the absolute which God planted in us. This would be an agreement to forgive earth for not being heaven.

Every relationship, pleasure, ambition, job done, must have its core of discontent, must at some point fail us, because we are made to want something always just beyond us. What it is God alone knows. All we know is that if we did not have this infinite want we would settle for the here and now. In that case we would either love it and necessarily hate death, or else disapprove of it all. Both these attitudes would make it more difficult to forgive, less easy to grow into the wholeness, the holiness to which we are called. The art of forgiving becomes easier to master when we remember that "man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's heaven for?"