DEACON 11: Forgive and Forget?

DEACON 11
Forgive and Forget

I was really getting closer and closer to him, to the Deacon. He spoke of things that I could relate to, that I needed to know and just when I thought there was nothing more, he concluded with a most important topic: Forgiveness…

«Saint Matthew the Evangelist, said (St. Matt. 6:14-15) that if we forgive men their trespasses, our Father in Heaven will forgive ours; if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven. I am paraphrasing, but the idea, the teaching, is that we, as fallible human beings, will commit offenses for the which we need forgiveness. And we all need forgiving for something. We are not perfect.

«And the reason, in my opinion, that Saint Matthew stressed that, should we not forgive, we will not be forgiven, is because of the hearts of stone some of us have, We need to be reminded that holding grudges and trying to get even will only get us in deeper trouble and that it does not solve anything. Not even from a psychological point of view. It is easier, and more spiritually rewarding, to cleanse our consciousness by forgiving that, or those, who have offended us.

«But do we need to forget? Well Jesus said, according to Saint Matthew (Matt.18,21-35), that one must forgive not just seven times but seventy times seven times. But does that mean that we also forget? I do not know. You think for yourselves on that one. Personally, forgiving offenses committed against us is one thing; forgetting them is another. I think one does not need to forget them once one has forgiven.

The real problem is carrying the weight of the anger that one has developed from the offense and the desire for revenge. Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher and writer of the Tao Te Ching supposed that forgiveness allows us to proceed forward in life and achieve peace of mind. And naturally, one cannot have peace of mind if one is continually preoccupied thinking that someone has offended us and what will we do about it.

«The Lakota Indians, which have given us beautiful prayers and much spirituality, stress the need for forgiveness as well. «We have to forgive. Those of us who pray in traditional Lakota ceremony know that our prayers are greatly diminished when we choose to remain unforgiving. The level of our personal thought and inner emotion does affect the sacred energy we create in Lakota ceremony. So, because we pray with the Cannunpa and other sacred medicines, we have to forgive people who may have done great wrong to us or our family members. Forgiveness is the only way we are going to heal.» (*Vi Waln is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and is nationally published journalist.)

«I will conclude by saying that even those who have committed grave injustices to others, to include homicide and murder must be forgiven. They have fallen under a dark cloud. Or they are evil people. But God makes it rain upon the just and the unjust and God’s sun shines on the good and the bad. We are not here to judge, revenge is the Lord’s. To be at peace one must forgive.»

CHEERS