Learning forgiveness from prisoners

Two weeks ago I wrote on another blog on encountering a family which had forgiven the man who had killed two members of their family. Their faith in a God who called us to love our enemies gave them the strength to forgive the killer face to face.

A week ago, in a prison in Honduras, I learned even more about forgiveness.

Sister Pat Farrell and I were facilitating a second-level workshop of the Alternatives to Violence Program on forgiveness with ten of those in prison. We had never worked on this theme before and so there was quite a lot of reworking and even improvising.

For reasons of confidentiality I will not share the stories, but I saw men who were in need of forgiveness and in need of forgiving. Many of those in prison, having suffered from abuse and violence since their youth, having never learned to deal with alcohol and drugs in a healthy way, have ended up in prison – some falsely accused.

I was surprised to hear three of the men speak of experiences of forgiveness that they had seen or experienced – persons who forgave others despite the harm suffered. It was humbling.

It was also a reminder that we are so often besieged by the stories of violence and vengeance that we do not have our ears attentive to the stories of forgiveness and reconciliation which are more common than many of us believe.

This morning, I listened to two speeches of Fr. Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who has worked with gang members for decades. In his commencement speech at Pepperdine University this year he concluded his talk with these words:

Graduates, you go from here to the margins because that’s the only way they get erased. And you brace yourselves because the world will accuse you of wasting your time, but the prophet Jeremiah writes “in this place of which you say it is a waste there will be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness – the voices of those who sing.” Make those voices heard. For you go to the margins, not to make a difference, but that the folks at the margins make you different.

Those visits to the village and to the prison are slowly making me different.

Fr. Boyle’s 2017 Laetare Medal speech at Notre Dame can be found here.