A reader writes:
I ABSOLUTELY love your teaching content/style, Brother! I do have two questions of you, though: 1, a follow-up from your comment on “forgiveness” and 2, a question on suffering (in general, on how to treat & react to it):
1) FORGIVENESS – It sounded so liberating to hear you say “Why do it (ie. forgive someone) in a greater way than God does? In other words, if someone “asks” God for forgiveness, He does. If someone doesn’t ask, God doesn’t. Coming from a Protestant background, that statement seemed so liberating and just knocked my socks off. I’ve had folks that bruised me (emotionally) pretty badly and I severely struggled, trying to make myself “Believe” that I’d actually forgiven them (without them ever asking), but never quite “feeling” that I’d forgiven them (and feeling guilty about NOT quite forgiving them!). DO I HEAR you saying that I can keep them in a separate “you really hurt me” category and keep a feeling of wariness when around them? (I suppose that I might just have to keep that wariness from appearing grudgeful, though). Bottom-line, Jimmy; I need to know what is correct and what is desired (with my thinking about them and my treatment of them). I KNOW that I need to be ready to forgive them if they ask……and I would suppose that I need to keep from “holding a grudge). ??
2) SUFFERING – is allowed by God and can actually, if I “offer it so”, somehow actually have “positive effects” on folks coming to Salvation??
Finally, I’d love to be able to order your sessions from Catholic Answers Live. Listening to you on AM 990 (just north of Detroit) is a blessing……truly!!
THANKS, my friend and Brother-in-Christ!
Thank you very much for the support and the kind words. Regarding your questions:
1) It is entirely reasonable to be wary of those who have gravely hurt one in the past. The fact that they have done it before counts as evidence that they might one day do it again, though if they recognize and own up to what they did then this constitutes evidence that they are less likely to do it again than if they have not repented.
You are not in direct control of your feelings, and so you do not need to worry that you have feelings of anger or frustration regarding these people. You do, however, need to be prudent in not allowing these feelings to hurt you and your relations to others. This means willing yourself to try looking on the bright side, not taking things in a sharply personal way, and not obsessing about the feelings. In other words, you should make choices that will help you “chill out” and not focus on the negative feelings that arise when you think about these things.
You need to be willing to forgive, as you say, if they ask forgiveness. You also need to will their good. This means willing that they repent (at least before God, if not before you), find his forgiveness, and end up in heaven.
As long as you do these things, you are not holding a grudge against them, even if you do continue to feel wary and at times pained and angered by the memory of what they did.
For more info, read this article.
2) Suffering is allowed by God and we can ask him to bless others if we handle it in a way that pleases him. This is what Jesus did, and we follow his example when we ask God to bless others if we handle our sufferings in a God-pleasing manner.
We are to pray for others, including their salvation (which means praying that they will be given the graces enabling them to come to faith), and we may add extra “oomph” to these prayers–if I may put it that way–by asking God to bless them if we have pleased him, including how we have handled the sufferings that come to us.
Finally, though you can’t order my appearances on Catholic Answers Live (except for a “best of” CD of the kids’ show), you can download them for free from catholic.com.
Hope this helps, and God bless!
