This is the second in a series of four articles on forgiveness by Tom Delaney, an occasional writer for The Central Minnesota Catholic.
Can you remember a time when you felt the same as someone else? Maybe you were with a friend laughing at something together. Or maybe you were with family in a time of sadness or grief. Our ability for feeling the same as someone else is one of the things that makes us human and helps us live life more abundantly. Feeling the same as someone else is a wondrous moment when we feel a special unity with someone rather than our usual feelings of difference from other people.
Accompaniment is a special theme of Lent in our diocese this year. Accompaniment happens when we reflect Christ’s merciful love by seeing, hearing and valuing each person we meet. Pope Leo has said that in the Lenten journey, we “renew our commitment to following Christ, accompanying him on the road to Jerusalem.” Empathy is an important part of accompaniment. In his letter to the Romans, Paul wisely counseled, “We, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another” (12:5). He added that we are to “love one another with mutual affection…rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (12:15). Paul also saw peacemaking as important for mutual love between people that reflects Christ’s merciful love. He counsels: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, on your part, live at peace with all” (12:17-18).
Forgiveness is our main tool for peacemaking, every day, all day. The Lenten call to valuing each person we meet as a reflection of Christ’s merciful love includes forgiveness for the people who wrong us. Forgiveness is a place where our faith and science converge, and research has shown that the key to full and lasting forgiveness is finding empathy with the person who wronged us. When we can see for ourselves the circumstances of a person who wronged us and how those circumstances probably caused the person to do the wrong they did, and even how we too might act the same way if we were in the same circumstances as that person, we hold the key to full and lasting forgiveness – a forgiveness that is “noble in the sight of all.”
Last week, we started a guided experience of forgiveness by getting a piece of paper or a journal, listing the people we could forgive, what they did, and how it made us feel. We also picked a person on the easier side to forgive. This week, we can take the next step in forgiveness by taking another piece of paper, or another page in our journal, and making a T-chart (a letter “T” about as long and wide as the page). On the left side of that T, we can make a list of things we know were going on with the person, or past things that happened to the person, that probably caused the wrong they did. On the right side of the T-chart, for each of the things you listed on the left, use empathy and perspective taking to write down a statement that starts with something like, “I can see how that would make a person feel (or think)…” or “If that were me, I might feel (or think) the same because …” The statements you write are your thoughts of empathy, and are going to unlock your ability to forgive in a way that is full and lasting. You are on your way to a transformative Lenten experience of peacemaking.
Tom Delaney (OFS, MA Theo) is an educational psychologist and Secular Franciscan in the St. Cloud Diocese, certified in forgiveness group facilitation by the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. This text is an original work and was not composed or edited with artificial intelligence (AI).