There is no perfect family. We don’t have perfect parents, we are not perfect, we don’t get married with a perfect person nor do we have perfect kids. We have complaints of each other. We were disappointed in each other. Therefore, there is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness. Forgiveness is vital to our emotional health and spiritual survival. Without forgiveness the family becomes a theatre of conflict and a bastion of grievances. Without forgiveness the family gets sick. Forgiveness is the sterilization of the soul, the cleaning of the mind and the liberation of the heart. Who does not forgive has no peace of soul nor communion with God. The pain is a poison that intoxicates and kills. Save a wound of the heart is a self-destructive gesture. It is autophagy. Who does not forgive sickens physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That’s why the family has to be a place of life and not of death; territory of healing and not of disease; stage of forgiveness and not of guilt. Forgiveness brings joy where sorrow produced pain; and healing, where pain caused disease.
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When we see a person who has committed vicious sins and crimes escaping with impunity, we react with indignation. We want to see that person called to account and punished, and feel angry that this has not happened. But at such moments we should reflect on our own actions; indeed we should turn that sense of indignation inward against ourselves. Each of us should ask: “How many sins have I committed against others, when I have escaped with impunity?” There are, no doubt, many examples in all our cases. Recognizing this fact will cause our anger against others to melt away. More importantly, it will make us turn to God and ask forgiveness of these sins. Yet there is perhaps a difference between our own sins and the sins which we notice in others. Our own sins are probably quite subtle and inconspicuous, whereas the sins of others are obvious and gross. Should we, therefore, regard our own sins as less important or die? On the contrary, we should realize that subtle sins are frequently the most harmful. Obvious sins, such as robber and violence, are easily recognized, and so can often be guarded against by physical means. The more subtle sins, such as lying and slander and power-mongering are frequently hard to spot, and so difficult to prevent.
—St. John Chrysostom, On Living Simply -
Because our parents live inside us as part of our own psychic constitution, cutting them off would be something like trying to excise a liver or heart, a part of our body essential for life. “Cutting off” parents as a way of managing anxiety and pain may provide temporary relief, but as an attempt at a permanent solution it is bound to have deleterious effects on everyone: on the perpetrator of the abuse, who never gets confronted with the effects of his sin; on the victim, who not only remains in a victimized position vis–à–vis her parents, but is also seriously split (i.e., cut off from herself) insofar as she avoids facing the internalized representations of her parents; and also on the whole extended family, who are adversely affected by the taboos and secrets related to the abuse, even if they themselves have no direct knowledge of it.
Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger -
The actuality of God’s grace toward sinners not only assures us of our own forgiveness, but is also the condition for the possibility of our forgiving anyone who has harmed us. Only insofar as forgiveness is first received as God’s unimaginable gift can it be offered to another in love. That is to say, only as we receive the actuality of God’s forgiveness do we have the capacity to forgive another who has harmed us.
Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger -
Do you pardon the sins of others as readily as you pardon your own? And are their sins really as bad as you think they are?
Other people deserve a break as much as you do.
— Dan Pedersen, Forgiveness | Living With Confidence -
“Bear with everyone as God bears with you.”
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There is a difference between saying ‘I’m sorry’ and saying ‘Forgive me.’
—Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis, Forgiveness
“You know, Don, there’s a difference between apologizing and asking for forgiveness,” he said. “An apology is a statement, as informal as a press release, but asking forgiveness involves giving power to the person you’re seeking forgiveness from.”
