What exactly does it mean to forgive anyway?

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In general it’s always best to trust that you can’t do anything on your own, and turn towards prayer. This is humility. I have similar concerns too, but that’s probably an indication that my faith is too weak, and I devalue prayer.

Who told you that feeling guilty is a sign of pride? It leads to humility, the greatest virtue.
 
Mary, just because we see the other person as wounded does not mean that we are the ones who should care for them.

We can easily accept that we might not be the best person to care for someone who has a broken leg.

In the same way, we should realize when we would be in over our heads if someone were suffering from wounds we can do nothing about except pray, right?

Sometimes the best thing we can do for a person is to get out of the way and let a more competent person care for them.
 
You don’t always sin when you feel guilty. Some people hold on to their guilt, say, by “feeling” unforgiven after Confession.

We must be willing to consider that we might be wrong in the way we view something.
 
tom1 said:
Who told you that feeling guilty is a sign of pride? It leads to humility, the greatest virtue
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Someone who was quoting certain words of monks and saints from Mt. Athos. I wasn’t raised religious, just baptized, so whenever someone who is obviously from a deeper religious background is giving spiritual advice it has a great impact on me.
tom1 said:
In general it’s always best to trust that you can’t do anything on your own, and turn towards prayer. This is humility. I have similar concerns too, but that’s probably an indication that my faith is too weak, and I devalue prayer.
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Yes I am disappointed that I can’t fix certain things by myself and that is definitely pride.
 
Thank you a lot. Your reply really is a sun ray in my temporary (I hope) contemplative darkness. Now I see that letting go is not always a bad thing. Not if you do it together with God. I thought I trusted Him but now I realize that I don’t. Not nearly as much as I should just to get help from Him.
 
Mary888 said:
Someone who was quoting certain words of monks and saints from Mt. Athos. I wasn’t raised religious, just baptized, so whenever someone who is obviously from a deeper religious background is giving spiritual advice it has a great impact on me.
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You might benefit from this too ☺️ :

 
Thank you so much. You really did bring me home to what I held that I understood…
Many :hugs: for video with St. Paisios. It burned my head in the right place I hope.
 
I guess get rid of your desire to seek revenge or retribution. Or to harbor negative thoughts toward them. A priest told me true forgiveness is a miracle. It is easy to claim to forgive.
St. Maria Goretti proves that only a person truly aligned to Christ can fully forgive the most evil wrongdoing.
I don’t think humans can easily forgive strong offenses on their own.
I don’t fully know or understand forgiveness.
My technique is simply to pray and distract myself so I don’t stew, ruminate, or speak poorly of them.
 
Thank you truly for sharing this. I think I’ll take heed to this advice. God bless you.
 
I suppose it depends on the purpose of the negative thoughts or even speech. I guess I feel like there’s a certain amount I have to do, just for the purpose of keeping myself safe. It’s stupid, but I don’t feel like I can let my guard down, at least not without some sort of genuine apology. Not for the purpose of holding it against another person, but for the purpose of damage control. Even when you know that’s going to hurt them terribly.

I think that’s often where the difficulty is. I know we are called to forgive people, but it seems hard to balance that with taking care of yourself, especially when you know that taking care of yourself is something they will find extremely hurtful.
 
I’m a little confused about your first paragraph. So you feel you have to remind yourself negative things to keep yourself safe? I’m not quite certain if I know what you’re talking about.
All I can say is well pray.
 
Think of when you’re dealing with someone who can try to sneak things in very subtly, or who can flip very quickly, or who abuses information told to them. You have to remind yourself of negative things, because you have to remember that those kind of things can come up very quickly even when you are currently having a perfectly normal conversation. There’s a certain amount of “remember what they’ve done” that you have to keep in your mind. It’s like remembering that a particular dog has a tendency to bite, even when it’s wagging its tail.
 
I don’t think that is sinful bit perhaps you should ask a priest. I think it is generally best to avoid such manipulative people. I’m sorry you have to deal with such a person. I truly hate giving this advice but this too shall pass.
 
On EWTN radio, one of the experts says says that forgiveness refers to abandoning the desire to get revenge on somebody. Reconciliation is desirable when it can be achieved, but that’s different from forgiveness. There’s a lesson here that we shouldn’t hurt each other so much as to make reconciliation so difficult.

I’m in such a situation with a relative who, in fact, has a genuine mental problem that prevents “normalization.” The inability to reconcile or the desire not to reconcile suggests deep personality issues.

In Orthodox Judaism, you’re supposed to go to another person and beg forgiveness - over and over - (remember how Jesus says to leave your gift at the altar and be reconciled with your “brother”?). Again, the difficult cure should make you avoid getting into such messes in the future.

Both Mother Angelica and Father Benedict Groeschel both said in different programs on EWTN tv that we don’t have to be doormats for other people.
 
I think you’re correct. If people hurt each other deeply, it makes it difficult to reconcile. Some folks forgive but elect to never reconcile. Some people are truly toxic or even emotionally abusive/cruel. I’m so happy the Catholic Church teaches us not to be doormat. I love Mother Angelica. St. Maria Goretti went above and beyond and perfectly model Christ’s idea of forgiveness.
She is a saint to ask for help with forgiveness.
 
Your situation sounds somewhat like mine. And it’s unfortunate as well knowing that people we feel the need to protect ourselves from, often take those actions as hurtful to them. In my case, it’s that the person desires a relationship, but somehow either “isn’t doing” whatever I ask them not to do, or has a perfectly justifiable reason that they absolutely have to do that. So when it comes around, I’m “being mean and selfish for no reason” and they just don’t understand why I’m being so hurtful.
 
I think forgiveness is required of us because we will surely need it on ‘that’ day. What goes around comes around; we can’t expect it if we don’t give it.
Also, remember, Jesus commanded us to forgive. I can’t recall him telling us to forget. Indeed, I think he’d be impressed if we forgave and then used shrewd judgement in dealing with that person or those people again. It would be foolish in the extreme to keep lapsing into the same situations where we need to forgive again and again because he/she/they have ‘taken us for a ride once more.’

There was a guy on Australian 60 Minutes some years ago. His daughter had been brutally murdered years prior, and he had been brought face to face with the killer (now convicted and doing time for it). It was one of those ‘victim-offender’ meetings where the victim’s family gets to confront the killer in a controlled setting.
Anyway, the father forgave the killer.
The TV interviewer asked, “How could you forgive that person?”
The father said, “I didn’t forgive him for him, I forgave him for me. I had to do that to get on with life.” (paraphrased, but pretty close).

That’s true forgiveness.
 
The question here really isn’t “how” but “what”. When you’re looking at someone…like saying “letting go” or “forgiving for yourself”…to me, those are statements that don’t really have any sort of thing I know how to do attached to them, or any sort of concrete thing where I can look at it and say, there, I have forgiven that person. They’re just kind of nice words.
 
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