Judgement would hold nothing but terror for us if we had no hope of forgiveness. And the gift of forgiveness itself is implicit in God's and people's love. Yet it is not enough to be granted forgiveness, we must be prepared to receive it, to accept it.
We must consent to be forgiven by a daring faith and generous hope, welcome the gift humbly, as a miracle which love alone, love human and divine, can work, and be forever grateful for its gratuity, its restoring, healing reintegrating power.
We must never confuse forgiving with forgetting, or imagine that these two things go together. Not only do they not belong together, but they are mutually exclusive. to wipe out the past has little to do with constructive, imaginative, fruitful forgiveness; the only thing that must go, be erased from the past, is its venom; the bitterness, the resentment, the estrangement; but not the memory.
We must consent to be forgiven by a daring faith and generous hope, welcome the gift humbly, as a miracle which love alone, love human and divine, can work, and be forever grateful for its gratuity, its restoring, healing reintegrating power.
We must never confuse forgiving with forgetting, or imagine that these two things go together. Not only do they not belong together, but they are mutually exclusive. to wipe out the past has little to do with constructive, imaginative, fruitful forgiveness; the only thing that must go, be erased from the past, is its venom; the bitterness, the resentment, the estrangement; but not the memory.
Meditations on a Theme, Oxford: Mowbrays 1972:104-6
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