Forgiveness FAQ

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You are too funny Mr Soc4Jesus! I agree with you all. I am of the belief that both aspects of forgiveness - resentment or pardoning - are most perfectly dealt with unconditionally. I know you have some issues with the unconditional pardoning aspect, but that is OK. You have still come a long way from when we started and although I got cranky at times :o it has been a beneficial experience and I thank you and the rest of the Endless Forgiveness Debate Team as well.
I would like to thank the whole team. I read countless pages, before I ever decided to join in with my question. I know that I received the information that I needed and was super glad to find people who could debate and find the answer. Life isn’t always easy or beautiful, but it is interesting. Thank you again for all of your help, and May God :blessyou: You all are the best!
scarlet405
 
Speaking for myself, you made my day, Scarlet! Glad to help you out.

🙂
 
I sort of agree with you Soc and I have had a good weekend with much prayer and confession and family talk of truth. We aired things out no big outbursts and no condeming each other, some forgiveness. I have been reading along and it has helped thanks to you all. Blessings to you, Dessert
Still praying for you and yours, dessert. May God richly bless you.

🙂
 
WOW - I missed a lot in the last 2 days (I’m not usually around my computer as much on the weekend - and this weekend was particularly busy).

Socrates, I want to congratulate you on making a major breakthrough! 🙂 I also want to thank you (and everyone on, as Philthy puts it, the Endless Forgiveness Debate Team) for this wonderful (albeit LONG) discussion on Forgiveness. I know I have learned a lot and grown a lot in Forgiveness in my own life.

Scarlet, you are in my prayers. Dessert, you are also in my prayers. I will take your names with me when I go to Adoration to pray today and spend some special time praying for each of you. May God grant you both his Peace and Love and Mercy and Forgiveness to such an extent that they overflow out of your life into the world around you! 🙂

By the way, Socrates, have you fully considered the passage from 2 Kings I presented?
 
👋 Hello Dr. Piano, and thank you for the prayers. :gopray2: It was a difficult topic and one that has been very difficult to deal with and understand. The team has made this possible for me, and I have begun the process to forgive. I know that it is vital to my own soul and to my Peace in life to forgive. It certainly was a lot of reading, but well worth it. Thank you all again so much for the help.
May the Peace of God be with all of You.
scarlet405:)
 
It has been a long, hard climb to the top of this mountain. I must admit i had anticipated the satisfaction of arriving at the top and surveying the delightful panorama from horizon to horizon.

“See?” i imagined myself saying. “How beautiful is forgiveness as she sets, filling the expanse of the heavens with waves of brilliant hues. A holy trinity is she–not resentful, pardoning completely and cancelling all debts. As the Spirit cannot touch one of you without your being touched by both the Father and Son, so too no one part of forgiveness can touch one forgiven without the other parts embracing her as well. Now you know that this lady is as i described her, and even more breathtaking than my feeble words could say.”

Yet when i reached the summit with my companions, i opened my mouth but no words came out. My jaw fixed open as though i was the comical tin man, i stared dumbfounded at the horizon.

“Soc, you mustn’t stand their with your mouth wide open.” said Jane with whimsical smile. “You’re in peril of catching a fly!”

“From the look of him, I doubt Mr. Socrates would notice if an entire swarm took up residence on his tongue!” laughed Phil.

“I do believe he might be in shock,” said the good doctor with a grin and a wink of her eye. “Perhaps i should wrap him in a blanket.”

“Why, you’d think he’d never seen the forgivenesses before!” said Chuck, slapping me on the back.

His slap seemed to clear my head enough to see that i was not in a dream. There on the horizon was not one setting sun, but three. The forgivenesses, as Chuck called them, were not a trinity at all, but a triad.

“What do you have to say about the lovely triplets, Soc?” asked Chuck merrily, and in reply i recited:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. “One of the psalms, i think,” Chuck replied thoughtfully.

“Yes, Psalm 19.”

“Come, Socrates,” said Jane and the doctor in unison. “Come sit with us and watch them set in all their glory.”

And so i did.
 
Hello Soc, That was absolutely wonderful! 😃 You write a tremendous amount like my younger son, a journalism major. It tickled me too, I had to chuckle a couple of times. I just thought I would let you know that I enjoyed reading this, it made my day. ☘️ :irish2: Have a great evening and may God Bless You.scarlet405
 
That was beautiful, Socrates. I loved reading it - and had to read it twice! 🙂
 
Okay… now that we’re all in agreement and there has been a breakthrough, I’ll rejoin this thread and share in this love fest. 😃 I think we all need to do the following:

:grouphug:

May God bless you all.

God Bless,
Michael
 
Okay… now that we’re all in agreement and there has been a breakthrough, I’ll rejoin this thread and share in this love fest. 😃 I think we all need to do the following:

:grouphug:

May God bless you all.

God Bless,
Michael
 
👋 Hello there and I believe you are correct so here is my :grouphug: and I wish that God would Bless Each and Every One of you. :amen: Yours in Christ,
 
It has been a long, hard climb to the top of this mountain. I must admit i had anticipated the satisfaction of arriving at the top and surveying the delightful panorama from horizon to horizon.

“See?” i imagined myself saying. “How beautiful is forgiveness as she sets, filling the expanse of the heavens with waves of brilliant hues. A holy trinity is she–not resentful, pardoning completely and cancelling all debts. As the Spirit cannot touch one of you without your being touched by both the Father and Son, so too no one part of forgiveness can touch one forgiven without the other parts embracing her as well. Now you know that this lady is as i described her, and even more breathtaking than my feeble words could say.”

Yet when i reached the summit with my companions, i opened my mouth but no words came out. My jaw fixed open as though i was the comical tin man, i stared dumbfounded at the horizon.

“Soc, you mustn’t stand their with your mouth wide open.” said Jane with whimsical smile. “You’re in peril of catching a fly!”

“From the look of him, I doubt Mr. Socrates would notice if an entire swarm took up residence on his tongue!” laughed Phil.

“I do believe he might be in shock,” said the good doctor with a grin and a wink of her eye. “Perhaps i should wrap him in a blanket.”

“Why, you’d think he’d never seen the forgivenesses before!” said Chuck, slapping me on the back.

His slap seemed to clear my head enough to see that i was not in a dream. There on the horizon was not one setting sun, but three. The forgivenesses, as Chuck called them, were not a trinity at all, but a triad.

“What do you have to say about the lovely triplets, Soc?” asked Chuck merrily, and in reply i recited:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. “One of the psalms, i think,” Chuck replied thoughtfully.

“Yes, Psalm 19.”

“Come, Socrates,” said Jane and the doctor in unison. “Come sit with us and watch them set in all their glory.”

And so i did.
:clapping: Beautifully written!

God Bless,
Michael
 
Many informative statements in this dialogue ! This takes me back many years but a priest psychologist talked to a group @ our parish and talked about confession. He said that it wasn’t having 40 year old women coming and telling that they disobeyed their mother !! He then went on to tell us that whenever he met a certain personality type, he seemed to resent that person and through discernment and prayer, he realized that when he was younger and had been made fun of, he resented that person and never forgave him. Once he made an act of the will to forgive this person, he was freed from this lasting resentment towards others. I then had a chance to confess to this priest and told him that I lacked a sense of confidence but didn’t understand fully why as I had forgiven the people in my life. This priest told me that in his experience that if I prayed about it during the week, I would get the answer ! Sometime during the next wk, our Lord let me know that He was not real to me – that my relationship was an abstract one. Interestingly, I was actually praying to his Mother as she was real to me ! – so much for : " To Jesus through Mary ".

Working with the Pregnancy Help Line years ago I encountered another speaker who was getting her doctorate and her paper was on Forgiveness. The university of Wi actually had a class on forgiveness. This lady was doing her paper on post abortive men and women. She told us that forgiveness and reconciliation were two different things – that these young kids needed to go through the forgiveness process but that this did not mean they were to have a lasting relationship.

Have also read that conversion and forgiveness is an ongoing process and when Christ is real, we let Him do the forgiving for us as it is His Grace that allows this to happen – At any rate, the Our Father is so much more meaningful in my life, especially during the sacrifice of the Mass.
 
Okay… now that we’re all in agreement and there has been a breakthrough, I’ll rejoin this thread and share in this love fest. 😃 I think we all need to do the following:

:grouphug:

May God bless you all.

God Bless,
Michael
I knew you were out of sight but not far, Michael! I imagine you were with us in spirit each step of the way up the mountain trail, hiding in the shadows of the elms, oaks and ferns.

🙂
 
Thank you all. It has been a wonderfully hard journey, and well worth every step!

I suppose anything i add now will be as an epilogue to a good story. My goal was to define forgiveness, so i suppose i should not fail to do so:

Forgiveness is an act of love that (1) always, and absolutely unconditionally, ceases to feel resentment; and that (2) sometimes conditionally personally pardons a person for sins committed against you or those for whom you care by sometimes requiring the forgiven to repent; and that (3) sometimes conditionally cancel a debt owed to you by sometimes requiring the person you forgive to repent.
My guess it that this is the standard of forgiveness by which i should measure all my acts of forgiveness to see if they measure up. If they do not, i have sin to confess and for which i must repent. If they do meet this standard, my conscience will be clear that i have forgiven as God would have me.

What does everyone think of this definition, this concept, this standard of what it means to forgive?
 
Hi there Soc…

Unfortunately i have had dramas with this contraption that i am typing on…

Just to let you know that my wonderful Fr Dave will not be visiting with us as his father has been sick and passed away this past Sunday, his funeral is tomorrow, Thursday in Australia…we are very sad, and i am sorry, but i will be unable to ask him what you asked, as i will not get to see him this visit. He has been with his father the last 2 or 3 weeks, by his bedside every day… May God bless his soul, he was a beautiful man, not a Catholic, but Fr Dave’s mum and nanna are…

Sorry Soc, didn’t want you to think i was rude and forgot about you…and what i promised to do for you. This computer is to blame! :mad: Time for a new one maybe???

I have not visited CAF since 29 June, so i have alot of catching up to do…

Take care and God bless

Tweets
 
{{{{{{{{{{{{ Tweety }}}}}}}}}}}}

Good to see you, matey!

You were missed, but i was not put off by your absence. Sorry to hear about the good friar. I’ll pray for him and his family.

How is your mum? Has she recovered from her illness?
 
Hey Soc,

No unfortunately not. The flu down here is lingering and everyone has a bark in their cough. Braden (our son) also has been sick for a few weeks, it is a rotten winter. Spent yesterday with mum, she came here as we have the enclosed fire, nice and toasty warm. The sun is shining and it looks glorious outside, but it is still cold. Too cold and winter is not over yet. The rains have been a GODSEND to Australia, but we are still in a drought.

Very sad about Fr Dave’s father, but with Fr Dave by his side, what a blessing, to be there when his father took his last breath. I have to remember that Fr Dave is also a son, not just a priest and he has a broken heart at the moment… I can’t fathom watching my mum go, but…

Have not read through what i have missed, but i just had to read your ‘piece’ and you put a **big **smile on my face… God Bless!

Thank you Soc!

Tweets
 
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