Experiments in Catholicism: Preview heaven by forgiving others

If you’ve been watching the news lately, many events are happening or being brought back into the public conversation that stir very strong human emotions. At the beginning of September, there was the 1st anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. On Sept. 11, the country mourned 25 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center. In a Massachusetts courtroom, a deadlocked jury was unable to come to a decision in the Lindsay Clancy case.

All of these events bring up really strong emotions and spotlight the ugliness of humanity. As we feel these emotions bubble up in polite company, they rise to the surface and dominate how we respond to the people that we normally treat with love and respect. Instead of listening to other opinions and experiences, we feel that every conversation is a battle to win. Even though our side might theoretically win, it comes at the cost of wounding our brothers and sisters in Christ.

As Catholics, we’ve often been told that when someone offends us, we need to forgive them immediately. This often leads to the false belief that, to be right with the Lord, we have to block off our emotions. We believe that when we follow His guidance and laws, we shut off our humanity; however, the truth is that the Lord wants us to fully experience what it means to be human. So much so that He took the form of a man, Jesus Christ, to fully understand our experiences.

Jesus was a perfect person; however, that doesn’t mean He didn’t feel real human emotions. Remember the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is going through pure agony, but His apostles? They fall asleep. He says to them, “Could you not have stayed awake one hour with Me?” (Matthew 14). Over the next 12 hours, so many of his friends would betray Him, but when He rises from the dead three days later, He says to them, “Peace be with you.” So how can we go from feeling our very real emotions to also being ready to forgive others? We need to keep our hearts open.

In my early career, I worked in right-wing politics. Not the most neutral of career choices, but I believed in the work I was doing and had prepared for it for most of college. When I landed my first job, I was stoked. However, when I posted about it on social media, many of my college friends did not feel the same way.

One day, I got a message from a girl with whom I had been really good friends. We had been editors together on the college newspaper and spent hours working together every week. As I read the text, she outlined her issues with my political activity and said that because of this, we could no longer be friends. This stung. I thought that we had been able to see beyond our differences, but apparently she couldn’t. My coworkers said to shrug it off; it happens all the time in our line of work, but the hurt was still there.

A few years later, in my second year working for the diocese, I signed up for our annual Lenten book club. The book we were assigned was called “Everybody Needs to Forgive Somebody” by Allen Hunt. In all honesty, the topic of forgiveness seemed kinda boring to me. Why couldn’t we dig into some deep theological topic? I didn’t have anyone I needed to forgive, so why did this even apply?

As we read the stories of forgiveness in the book and discussed how they applied to our lives, I realized I was still holding on to the hurt from the end of the friendship. I still held anger towards this former friend. So I worked on thinking through the situation and really letting it go. In my heart, I began the work to forgive her.

Out of the blue a few months ago, a message popped up on my phone. This girl reached out and actually apologized. She regretted the way things ended and was asking for my forgiveness. I was completely stunned. I had given up on ever hearing from her again, but still, I didn’t want to hold this resentment in my heart. I had already done the work, so I was ready to forgive her and was able to offer that forgiveness immediately.

Psalm 95:8 says, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” When people hurt us, we want to close ourselves off. We believe that we are protecting ourselves. However, the Lord wants us to live in heaven with Him someday. So much so that He gives us tastes of heaven on Earth. When we work on forgiving others by keeping our hearts open, we allow ourselves to feel our emotions yet still live as the Lord wants us to. When we reconcile ourselves to our brothers and sisters in Christ, perhaps we get just a glimpse of what life was like before the fall of man, before enmity separated us. This glimpse is just a tiny peek of what heaven will be like, when everyone shall be reconciled to the Lord. Maybe it will feel a little bit familiar, and we’ll remember a time when we forgave a friend.

Experiment of the Week: Is there someone in your life you need to forgive? Try softening your heart and starting the work to forgive them.