Part Two of the “Motives of Christian Forgiveness” Series
Our Lord became man — became, in truth, all things to all men! — that He might win the love of all. He, too, therefore, has a right to our love.
We should love Christ as our Brother for He condescended to be born into our race, subjecting Himself in all the stages of His human development to earthly authorities, prone, as we are, to physical discomfort and fatigue.
We should love Christ as our Physician Who came to heal us. The countless Gospel cures should solidify our conviction that, no matter what our infirmity, He has our cure in hand. Have we been asking and received nothing? Then let us persevere! “Do not lose courage,” says St. Claude de la Colombière,
when you have begun so well to struggle with God. Do not give Him a moment’s rest. He loves the violence of your attack and wants to be overcome by you. Make importunity your watchword; let persistence be a miracle in you. Compel God to throw off His mask and say to you with admiration, “Great is thy faith! Be it done as thou wishest. I can no longer resist you; you shall have what you desire in this life and the next.” (Spes Nostra, 95)
Christ is our Prophet Who admonishes us not to abandon foolishly the path of life by acting contrary to the principles of the New Law promulgated in His glorious Sermon on the Mount. He is our Teacher Who educates and enlightens us not only with words but with the shining examples of His saints. Do we bother to look at these? To listen and learn from those who have taken His divine lessons to heart?
Christ is our King Who rules us with benevolence. His yoke is sweet and His burden light, but how often do we make it heavier by our rebellion?
Christ is our Judge Who takes into account the frailty of our humanity along with every noble desire and action of our lives, even securing for us the merit of having served Him personally when we do a service to our brethren (cf. Mt. 25:40). Do we do these services?
Christ is the Priest Who came to intercede for us, as well as the Victim Who offered Himself in atonement for our transgressions in order that we might be reconciled to our Father. Yet what is our devotion to His Passion, our appreciation for His death?
Appreciating the Passion of Our Beloved Savior
The sufferings and death of our Savior are arguably the strongest possible motive for us to extend compassion to our own offenders. If our appreciation for Christ’s Passion is weak, let us bolster it with these considerations from our brothers and sisters, the saints:
St. Francis de Sales reminds us that we will never be asked to bear for Him what He has already born for us:
When we are made to suffer some pains, troubles, or ill-treatment, let us turn our thoughts to the sufferings of our Savior. Immediately our own trials will become light and bearable, for no matter how bitter they may be, they will seem flowers in comparison to Christ’s thorns. (Spiritual Diary, April 29)
St. Vincent de Paul would have us rejoice that our sufferings should render us more like the Man of Sorrows:
We never have a greater reason to rejoice than when we are oppressed and burdened by sufferings and afflictions, because these render us similar to Christ Our Lord, and this resemblance is a true sign of our predestination. (Spiritual Diary, April 11)
St. Thérèse will help us understand that sacrificial love is not just a question of grand sufferings endured bravely on occasion, but of imitating Our Lord’s love for souls all of the time:
Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Meditating on these words, I realized how imperfect was my love for my Sisters; I saw that I did not love as Jesus loves them. I understand now that true charity consists in bearing with all the defects of our neighbor, in not being surprised at her weakness, in being edified by the least of her virtues. Above all, charity must not remain hidden in the heart, because no man lighteth a candle, and putteth it in a hidden place, nor under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they that are in the house may see the light. I think this candle must represent charity, which ought to enlighten and cheer not only those I love most but all that are in the house. (Just for Today, Feb. 8)
St. Francis de Sales agrees. “To love our neighbor as Our Lord commanded,” he says,
we must be good and warm-hearted, particularly when we find someone unattractive because of some natural or moral defect. Then, finding nothing in him to love for himself, we shall love him only for love of our Savior. The teaching of the Saints is that in loving and doing good, we should never consider the recipient, but rather the One for whose love we are acting. (Spiritual Diary, Nov. 22)
Sr. Mary of the Trinity places before our eyes the inestimable value of the trial we are even now undergoing:
How much we need trials to do the work of God within our soul! The good God has an immense desire to enrich us with His graces, but we regulate their measure, which is in proportion to our submission to His immolation of us — a joyful immolation, and a thankful one, like that of Jesus, in which we say with Him, The chalice which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it? The Divine Master called the hour of the Passion the cause for which He had come and for which He had longed. When some great suffering or insignificant sacrifice offers itself, let us think at once that this is our hour, the hour in which we are to prove our love for Him Who has loved us with an exceeding charity. (Spes Nostra, 131)
St. Claude de la Colombière summarizes the holy sentiments of all the saints when he speaks as follows:
This blow is a cruel one, you will say; He strikes too hard. Yet what do you have to fear from a hand that was pierced and nailed to the Cross for you? The path I tread is full of thorns, you will say. Yet is it not the same path He trod before you out of love for you? Is there a thorn in it that He has not reddened with His own Blood?
The chalice He offers you is a bitter one. But remember that it is your Redeemer Who offers it. Loving you as He does, could He bring Himself to treat you so severely if the need were not urgent, the gain not worthwhile?
If we could discover the designs of Providence, it is certain we would ardently long for the evils we are now so unwilling to suffer. We would rush forward to accept them with the utmost gratitude, if we had a little faith and realized how much God loves us and has our interests at heart. (Spes Nostra, 116)
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In a word, we should love Christ as our Savior Who yearns to be our All. “No matter how weak we are,” Dom Mary Eugene Boylan assures us,
He is our strength; no matter how empty we are He is our fullness; no matter how sinful we are, He is our holiness. All we have to do is to accept God’s plan — to say as Christ said coming into the world: “A body Thou hast fitted to Me; behold I come to do Thy will, O God.” We have to accept the self, the surroundings, and the story that God’s providence arranges for us. In humility we must accept our self — just as we are; in charity, we must accept and love our neighbor just as he is; in abandonment, we must accept God’s will just as things happen to us, and just as He would have us act. Faithful compliance with His will and humble acceptance of His arrangements will bring us to full union with Christ. For the rest, let us gladly glory in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in us. In our weakness and in our love we shall thus become one with Him…. (This Tremendous Lover, 372)
It is not likely that we will be stoned to death like St. Stephen, nor shot like the heroic president of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno; nor brutally tortured and publicly executed as were so many of the Christian martyrs throughout the centuries. If these men could with their dying breaths forgive their murderers out of love for the God-Man Who Himself begged His Father’s forgiveness for His executioners, surely grace can help us reach such heights of virtue, as well. Our Lord not only set the example of Christian forgiveness, but His forgiveness is the exemplary cause of our own. By His words, Father, forgive them, He merited for the members of His Mystical Body the grace to compassionate the ignorance of our offenders.
Do we dare claim to follow Our Lord by believing His teachings if we will not conform our lives to those same doctrines?
When Saints James and John were so eager to call down fire and brimstone on the town that had rejected the Gospel, Our Lord rebuked them, saying: You know not of what spirit you are (Lk. 9:55). Dare we wish just punishment on Our Lord’s miscreant brothers when He gave His life precisely to win mercy for them? No. Because we do truly love our Jesus, then, for the sake of His love for us, we will imitate Him. We will bless the one who has persecuted and injured us, bless and curse not (Rom. 12:14).
We will forgive.
