Part Four of the “Motives of Christian Forgiveness” Series
In our reflections on the all-important question of why we ought to forgive those who have injured us, we think next of our Blessed Mother.
Mary is also the Mother of our offender. Either actually or potentially, the person who has caused us grief belongs to our Mother and is the object of Her tender maternal solicitude. She, too, was wounded by the crime that has wounded you — but would you compound Her agony by refusing to think kindly of that child to whom She has personally mediated so many choice graces and for whom She has suffered so much?
The greatest injustice ever committed by man was the Crucifixion of the Savior of the World, the killing of the Author of Life. Who had more cause for anger, bitterness, and resentment during those three eternal hours than His Mother? The cruelty of the pagan Romans whose blind obedience led them to execute an innocent Man; the malice of Her own people whose spiteful jealousy led them to demand His execution; the jeering of the thieves; the callousness of the onlookers; the cowardice of the Apostles — all these considerations were, no doubt, as so many swords plunged into Her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. These injustices wounded Her. But did they anger Her?
No. There was no anger.
Not that anger would have been an improper reaction. On the contrary, St. John Chrysostom says that “Only the person who becomes angry without reason sins. Whoever becomes angry for a just reason is not guilty. Because, if anger were lacking, the knowledge of God would not progress, judgments would not be sound, and crimes would not be repressed” (Homily XI on St. Matthew). Our Lady had every right in the world to be angry.
But She chose not to exercise that right. Why? Because there was a higher, better, more Christlike reaction available to Her: Love. Charity is not provoked to anger; charity thinketh no evil…but rejoiceth with the truth. The Truth that rejoiced Our Lady’s Heart — even as the pain crushed it! — was that God willed this. So She kept Her peace.
Nothing discloses to us more astonishingly Her union with God than this unbroken calm. Where God is, there can be no trouble; and there was not a recess in Our Lady’s nature where God was not, and which He did not possess with undivided sovereignty. Hence, while horror followed horror, there was no amazement in Her soul, no bewilderment…. In what an abiding presence of God must Her soul have dwelt! How trained must each faculty of the mind have been, to fall in with the ways of God as it met them, and with such unquestioning promptitude, such unstartled dignity! …There was no effort, no struggle, no pause, no token that Her inward life felt the pressure of outward circumstances. The creature kept step with the Creator, and the angels marveled at the divine repose of Her beautiful dependence. (At the Foot of the Cross, 281–282)
What specific form did Our Lady’s love take at the foot of the Cross? Mercy. Rather than condemning those who were inflicting such torment directly upon Her Son and therefore indirectly upon Herself, She saw only with greatest charity and deepest compassion the damage these persons were inflicting on themselves.
Take the Bad Thief. Hardened in crime, condemned by the society he had wronged in countless ways, the man tradition identifies as Gestas was probably hated by many. But not by Our Lady. She would not let him be lost without a fight. She loved him. And so —
She pleaded, she insisted. One would have thought such prayer at such a time resistless. It is not Heaven that resists. Graces descend from above like flights of angels to the heart of the impenitent thief. They fluttered there. They sang for entrance. They waited. They pecked at the heart of flesh. They made it bleed with pain, with terror, with remorse. But it was its own master. It would not open. So near Jesus, and to be lost! It might well be incredible to Mary. Yet so it was. The thief matched his hardness against her sweetness, and prevailed. Mary may not be queen of any heart where Jesus is not already king. But, oh, the unutterable anguish to her of this impenitence! His face so near the Face of Jesus, the sighs of the spotless victim dwelling in his ear as silence dwells in the mountains, the very Breath of the Incarnate God reaching to him, the Precious Blood strewn all around him like an overflow of waste water, as if there was more than men knew what to do with , and in the midst of all this to be damned, to commute the hot strangling throes of that crucifixion for everlasting fire, to be detached by his own will from the very side of the Crucifix, and the next moment to become a part of hopeless hell! Mary saw his eternity before her as in a vista. She took in at a glance the peculiar horror of his case. There came a sigh out of her heart at the loss of this poor wretched son, which had sorrow enough in it to repair the outraged majesty of God, but not enough to soften the sinner’s heart. (At the Foot of the Cross, 247)
How could Our Lady have willed anything but mercy for this poor wretch when it was mercy that was streaming forth from every Sacred Wound of the Lamb of God?
But we dig deeper. What specific form, we ask, did the mercy of our Blessed Mother take in regard to Her Son’s executioners? Forgiveness. Whether they wanted Her compassion or not, regretted their wickedness or not; whether, ultimately, they would be reconciled with Her Son and spend eternity in His Kingdom or not — She could not but see these souls as Her Son saw them: with infinite tenderness and pity. Did He thirst for their salvation? She thirsted with Him. Did He offer His life’s Blood for them? She would do the same. Do we wish to be true children of this Valiant Woman? Then, for the love of Christ, let us forgive as She forgave: interiorly and exteriorly; refusing to hold their actions against them, ever ready to relieve them also of their just punishment; heroically seeing them and their deeds in light of God’s Providence, embracing each sword as it comes to us, even as our Mother embraced each one Providence entrusted to Her.
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“Behold, thy Mother!” Christ calls to us from His Holy Cross. She who understood better than any human person on earth, the mystery of Christian forgiveness — She will help us, too, if we let Her. She will enable us see that forgiveness is not letting go of the essential awfulness of the crime, nor its memory, nor even necessarily the pain intrinsic to that memory. Forgiveness, we have learned, allows us to replace our angry, bitter thoughts towards the person who committed the offense with thoughts of compassion; replace our natural, healthy inclination to be angry with a supernaturally healthier and holier choice to look upon our offender through his Mother’s eyes.
