A crucial sentiment for life

Commentary

Asking for forgiveness is not fashionable. Individualism, self-centeredness, and indifference to the experience of God, who is merciful and forgiving, have permeated the culture. It has created a pervasive environment where we believe that we are always right, that my opinion, because it is mine, is my truth, and I never criticize myself. This is a very egotistical self-absorption. What does it do to love? It causes many to consider it a confrontation, in which they must win above all else and get the other to comply with what I want or what pleases me. But is love combat? Is it a relationship in which one wins, and the other loses? Is the other person a loot? That is not love but war.

In order to forgive others, you first have to forgive yourself because no one – not even you – is free from committing mistakes and wrongdoing towards loved ones. To forgive yourself, you have to know how to forgive, that is, to have the experience of having forgotten any wrongdoing committed to you and given a new opportunity to the one who hurt you. No one is entirely innocent or completely guilty when it comes to love. We are all apprentices. Those who genuinely wish to forgive each other do not keep an account of who is guiltier. They lift each other. They are merciful among each other.

To forgive is also to know how to forgive oneself because the one who forgives is ready to repent and make amends. For this reason, forgiveness is a crucial sentiment for the survival of our loving relationships. Our loved one´s weakness does not frighten or scandalize our forgiveness ability; forgiveness rather excuses attenuates and alleviates. It seeks correction without humiliating or despairing and avoids turning the repentant into a perpetual culprit. Never be one of those “victims,” hypocritical and lethal, who are always interested in having a guilty defendant under their boots.

We are very understanding and merciful with our own miseries. It is only fitting that we should also be so, with the same measuring rod that we apply to the faults and errors of our loved ones. In doing so, we lend a helping hand to lift the fallen; instead of taking advantage of their faults to bring them down and subjugate them. In what manner would you like those you love to lift you encouraging you to improve? Well, lift and encourage them in the same way.

Not forgiving and continuing to accuse and blame is a false relief. Do you not have this experience? By not forgiving, you become enclosed in your annoyance, it expands, and you look for more blame in the other person to justify your hardness. In the end, you become suspicious and distrustful; you see bad intentions in everyone; and you become dark, bringing out the worst in yourself—this darkened way of existing damages profoundly the bond of love and family stability. Knowing how to forgive –a wise and generous art – is like making the sun rise in our intimate relationships.

Pope Francis confirms what I have been thinking for some time. How hard – and stupid – it is to maintain conjugal love for as many years as we live without knowing how to repair what we spoil daily, without knowing how to repent and forgive, and by letting it rot while every day the drawer of failures, disappointments, resentments and reproaches, sadness and feelings of heartbreak continues to fill up.

I want to tell you about a conjugal recipe. It is a summary of Pope Francis´ recipes. I tried it in my life, and it works very well.

How do we avoid having a black basement in our minds and a stone in our hearts? By discovering the opportunity that exists at this moment in time, today, instead of wasting it or, what would be worse, expanding the black cellar. Abandoning the pride of believing ourselves more perfect than our loved ones, knowing how to examine ourselves with humility and realism; encouraging our loved ones instead of constantly criticizing them; not forgetting to smile and returning to tenderness; showing tender mercy to the other and preventing, as if it were the plague, that our hearts turn to stone and always justify themselves with “I am right.” In the love that we live in the family, you cease to be “right,” if because of this, you become inflexible and merciless. You provoke distance and disunity. Why? Because when you do that, you have stopped loving your family.

Do you want to be reborn? Do you both want this? Do you honestly want it? Try the recipe. Lift each other´s spirit, and you will see the results. Some will even be noticeable that very day.