By Rev. Glenn Jones

“Letting go” … a phrase that has many contexts. “Letting go” may be literal, such as “Let go of the rope” or “He was arrested, but let go”, but very often we use it in one of many analogous senses. Negatively, we sometimes hear “He let himself go”, meaning a loss of care of one’s appearance. Certainly you may be able to think of more, but one of the most common uses of the term is, of course, the release of an obsession or grudge.

That ol’ forgiveness—that wonderful and magnanimous movement of kindness and love which we are quick to praise (especially when we are the ones seeking forgiveness!), but which we are all-too-hesitant to offer. So often we just can’t let go of often decades-long grudges, regardless of how trivial was the offense.

Christians recognize forgiveness as absolutely central to Jesus’ teaching; it’s in the Lord’s Prayer, after all: “…forgive us our trespasses, AS WE FORGIVE those who trespass against us (Matthew 6:9-13). And after giving that essential Christian prayer He warns His listeners:  “…if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15) We also could cite the parable of the munificent king in Matthew 18, and, more than any other, Jesus hanging upon the cross … gazing mercifully on His executioners: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) St. Paul, too, echoes that requirement to forgive in a list of virtues: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:12-14)

Yes, these may seem targeted towards Christians most of all, but they are for all Mankind. For the Christian these are divine commands, but even non-Christians discern the wisdom borne within these great words. After all, what greater philosophy has ever been promulgated than this exhortation to the mutual love and harmony of humanity … bearing patiently the inevitable weaknesses and foibles of our fellow men and women? How many of the world’s agonies could have been avoided if all took to heart those three words of Jesus: “Love one another.”

One of the most memorable examples of forgiveness I’ve witnessed was not long ago at an annual priest convocation. The hundred or so priests of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe gathered for a retreat and various administrative issues, and one might think (or not): “Certainly a pack of priests would not hold grudges!” Oh, would it be so … but people are people, and even saints are known to bicker. See Acts of the Apostles 15:37-39.

During this gathering, one of the priests celebrating several decades in the priesthood was supposed to say a few words. He rose, but rather than give a litany of the joys and honor of priestly ministry, he opened his soul and admitted how he and another priest (who was present) had had a heated argument decades before, and he had not spoken to that priest since—for over 30 years letting that grudge burn within him, and yet pride prevented reconciliation with his brother priest, even to refusing the overtures of the other. He then and there publicly asked forgiveness from that priest, and from all of us, for the pain, which he had inflicted in the priestly brotherhood and in the Body of Christ. So, finally, after 30-odd years in a senseless grudge, they were finally reconciled, and the harmony that once was lost was again found.

So “let go” unforgiving pride, for that enables to let go the anger. After all … how’s that anger working out for you? Feeling all better? … or does it burn within you like a smoldering wick or an open sore … as you pick at the soothing scab of time to prevent its healing? How quick we can be to absolve ourselves of the very same faults that we condemn in others. Can we not behold our own ample human weaknesses and yet have so little patience for those of others?

Yes … let go! … the grudge, the anger, the spite … for “Good sense makes a man slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” (Proverbs 19:11) … and considering Gandhi: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”