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.

Preaching forgiveness in the midst of violence and impunity

This morning I went to preside at a Celebration of the Word with Communion in a community that has suffered violence – and impunity.

A few years ago, one young man was arrested and two young men were killed by the police. The young man is still in prison and I think there has been no trial for the policeman who killed the two young men.

A little later, a jilted lover came and killed the woman and her two kids by locking them in a room and setting it on fire. They survived briefly but died. He is in prison.

A bit later, a couple related to people in this village and to one of those imprisoned was killed in their home in a machete attack in a different village.

How do you preach in a place touched by violence and injustice when the readings are about forgiveness? Here are some notes on what I shared.

I started by expressing my trepidation of preaching on forgiveness in the face of the sufferings of the people.

I asked them to remember, above all, that our God is compassionate and merciful, as we prayed in the responsorial, psalm 103.

First, I tried to explain that forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting or ignoring. In many societies, we try to ignore offenses and so never face them. Ignoring or claiming to forget an offense really leaves no place for real forgiveness.

Ignoring or forgetting an offense, a crime, can lead to the impunity that surrounds us here in Honduras – where the poor suffer and no one is held responsible.

But, real forgiveness can lead to reconciliation, to finding a way to live in peace with others. It is above all a way to leave the offended and the offender free to grow, to change.

The person who suffered can leave aside feelings of anger, revenge, resentment. These often tear at the heart of those who are offended, like a parasite depriving the person offended of peace, of the possibility of new life and growth. This pain, unattended to, can eat us up - from the inside. It can also lead, when resentment is allowed to fester, to feuds between persons, to fights, and even to deaths. When there is no justice, many take “justice” into their own hands – resulting in a cycle of pain and violence.

But forgiveness is liberating.

It can leave the offender free to change, to ask forgiveness, to make amends, to begin anew.

Forgiveness leaves a space for reconciliation and even solidarity between the person offended and the offender.

To help them think and pray about all this, I shared two stories. 

I spoke of a man whose little boy had been violated. He brought a complaint against the perpetrator to the justice system. The man was arrested. Some condemned him for doing this: “You are a delegate of the Word and have to forgive.” I told him that what he had done was good, especially since it cam out later that the man who violated other children and so he was preventing future harm. But, as I saw it, the delegate brought the charges without anger, without a desire for vengeance.

The other is the story of a Spanish missionary priest in Chile, Joan Alinsa, who was killed on September 19, 1973. (I wrote about him in a blog post three years ago.)The soldiers came and sought him out in the hospital where he worked. They were going to blindfold him before shooting him; but he told them “Please don’t blindfold me, kill me face to face, because I want to see you to forgive you.”

These are contrasting examples of how to deal with the call to forgive.

I closed emphasizing that our God is merciful and compassionate, but also noting that in the Lord’s prayer, which were about to pray before Communion, we ask our Father to “forgive us our offenses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

-->

We experience forgiveness from God, every day. We are called to forgive every day, especially in the little details of life. And thus God will forgive us even more.

And so I prayed that the forgiveness that leads to reconciliation will help regenerate this and all other places beset by violence, death, and injustice.