Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Praised be Jesus and Mary. “Forgive and you will be forgiven,” our Lord says. Forgiveness always works both ways. If we forgive, we can be forgiven; and if we don't forgive, then we can't be forgiven.
And there's a logic to this forgiveness. On the one hand, it goes beyond human logic. On the other hand, there is a logic to God's forgiveness.
First, to forgive, we have to recognize that we have been hurt. And then second, we have to recognize that there is really nothing we can do about that hurt. We can't rewrite history. We can't be unhurt. We can't not feel it. It's there. It's a wound that's been inflicted on us.
Step three, forgiveness, means we let go of trying to fix it, resolve it, settle it ourselves. It's simply beyond us. When we've been hurt, all we can do is sink deeper into it, to live in that hurt, hold on to it—which is unforgiveness—or try to inflict that same hurt back on the person who hurt us, make somebody else feel it as well. That, of course, makes the situation much worse, even though it seems like the way to solve the problem. But that's all we can do on our own.
So forgiveness means, “Well, I can't really fix it. I leave it to God.” There's a debt to be paid. There's a mess to be fixed, but I leave it to God to do so. I can't do it on my own. And again, that's why it's both ways, because sometimes we receive the hurts, and only God can fix that situation. Sometimes we inflict hurt on others, and then we are helpless to fix the mess that we create, to heal the wounds that we inflict.
So asking for forgiveness means the same thing, just in the other direction. I've incurred a debt; I've created a mess, a situation that I can't put back in order. So, God, You take care of it. Of course, we do what we can. Reparation has to be done, but it still goes way beyond us, so we ask God to intervene. We ask for forgiveness, and that's the logic of forgiveness. That's why it's two ways. That's why it's only if we forgive that we can be forgiven.
Either we try to fix these situations on our own. I mean, in the logic of forgiveness, debts are not ignored, but left to God to settle. If we want to settle them ourselves, well, we can neither forgive nor be forgiven. Only if we let God do so, then we can both forgive and be forgiven by God.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.