When you forgive, it is mainly for Gods sake, as we are told, love God above all else with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself
for the love of God.
but it is also for your own sake, and for the good of your neighbor,
not because he deserves it, but because God does, because remember that we are told
"Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. " Matthew 25:40
what we do to or for others, we also do to or for Jesus…so don’t think of it just as something you must do for the sake of your soul, but think of it as a great opportunity for the love of Jesus!
if someone apologized to you, no doubt you would forgive them, but what kind of charity is that? true charity never thinks of self, because true love is something given, and never something taken or forced(which is of course something we have to work on, and not something we will obtain very easily)
we are to love our neighbor, whether they love us or not, and part of that love is not just feeling like forgiving them, but wanting to,
there is a big difference between what you “feel” and what you “will”, we are not asked to love our neighbor in our feelings and affections, which we rarely have any control over, but instead we are asked to love them in our actions towards them, our example to them, and our prayers for them,
even if someone doesn’t ask for forgiveness, that really has nothing to do with you, it is their problem, and you should not make it your problem also,
of course it’s not always easy to forgive, sometimes people do really nasty things that hurt us very much, but if you have to give yourself a bit of time to let the hurt feelings go away, then that’s ok, and you should just pray while you’re waiting, for God to give you the love and strength to forgive.
to genuinely forgive with love in any circumstance no matter how bad, is not something you will master in a short time, you simply need to pray for it, and practice all of your virtues, which will help very much, and frequent the sacraments which will give you the graces you need to grow in your virtues,
just don’t think of it in terms of “I can’t do it” but instead, “I can’t do it alone”, when you recognize your complete dependence on God and act according to that, then you will not worry about what you can or can’t do, you will instead seek Gods help in all things, and depending on your own willingness to do His will and receive His graces, you will be able to accomplish this in particular, and much much more,
you mentioned that if someone tried to forgive you when you don’t want it(if you were that kind of person) that it would make you feel insulted and mad,
but look at it this way,
those people who go around being nasty and not caring, there is a good chance that many of them just haven’t been loved very much, which is not surprising in this day and age, and that lack of love in them or lack of love shown to them, will make them selfish that way,
but perhaps if you just show them that bit of selfless charity, then a seed of love may atleast be planted in them…
now of course that is not a sure thing, but it is certainly worth it to try, because you never know what may spark that flame in someones heart,
remember this quote “Preach often, and when necessary, use words” by Saint Vincent ferrer i think,
basically, your actions speak much louder than words, and people are much more likely to listen to your actions even if they don’t acknowledge it,
so even if you don’t say “I forgive you”, just forgiving them in your actions(or not holding a grudge in the first place) may help them in ways that you cannot imagine right now.
and not to mention, even if your forgiveness doesn’t mean anything to the person who offended you, it will still influence others around you,
and one thing i wanted to mention about confession,
although you must go to confession to be absolved, God may still forgive you before that, as we read from the bible here -
“And as he entered into a certain town, there met him ten men that were lepers, who stood afar off; And lifted up their voice, saying: Jesus, master, have mercy on us.Whom when he saw, he said: Go, shew yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, as they went, they were made clean. And one of them, when he saw that he was made clean, went back, with a loud voice glorifying God.” Luke 17:12
God is not a machine, and can very well forgive us as soon as we are sorry, but God knows what is best, and knows what great benefits we receive by taking part in the sacraments,
confession is an act of humility, obedience, faith, hope, and charity, and by going and confessing with true sorrow and sincerity, we receive the necessary graces to overcome our sins, and the strength to resist temptations,
and then of course confession being a sacrament, it is also the means to gaining back the sanctifying grace we lost by mortal sin, which we received in the first place by another sacrament - baptism.
so even though God can forgive as soon as we are sorry, He chooses to do things this way, and yet we still seem to be very ungracious about it, complaining that it’s to hard or something else, as if we were entitled to Gods forgiveness at all? we are very spoiled, because in all honestly, we should be willing to go to much greater lengths to be forgiven.
well, i don’t mean to direct that at you, i just felt inspired to rant slightly d:
alright, so that’s all, i hope this helps,
(check this out to
audiosancto.org/ )
