Continuing our celebration of this Jubilee Year of Mercy, we have been reviewing the corporal and the spiritual works of mercy. As we have seen, those are the concrete means that are part of our faith tradition for receiving and giving the mercy of Jesus.

So far, we have reflected on the first four Spiritual Works of Mercy: Instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, admonishing the sinner and bearing wrongs patiently.

The next Spiritual Work is: To forgive offenses willingly.

We can well understand the link between the Year of Mercy and our own forgiveness of others. The point that Pope Francis makes continually is that Jesus’ mercy is directed to us and to others, all others. To be like Jesus then, we need to desire to have our own offenses forgiven, and then we must forgive others.

Much of human history has revolved around the failure to forgive offenses among ourselves. How often between nations or tribes, or simply among families or individuals has the desire for revenge led the way to social ruptures and especially violence?

And looking into our hearts, we can understand why. Even the best of us must pray and struggle to be able truly to forgive someone who has offended us.

To be in a position to forgive is, in some ways, to find oneself in a position of power over another. That person, having offended us, might be able to make restitution. Sometimes they can give back what they stole from us, or clarify a falsehood they have told about us. Other times, there is no way to repair the injury. But what the offender cannot do is force us to forgive them.

Only in that forgiveness is the wound able to start healing, especially for the one who has offended. We then hold the key to healing the one who hurt us.

What we perhaps focus on less is how that forgiveness is true mercy for ourselves. Have you ever known someone who, because he or she refuses to forgive, increases their anger toward the other person? Sometimes we find them criticizing or complaining about other unrelated actions or attitudes of the person they will not forgive. Such people then become obsessed. Or they become simply a prisoner of their own anger, allowing it to infiltrate and ruin other relationships or parts of their life.

Humanly, we want to say to that person, “Just let it go!” But the spiritual reality is that he or she needs to forgive.

There is of course a deeper reality as well. It is that while in a particular case we may have been the object of the wrong that we need to forgive, every one of us also stands before God as one who has offended. Every one of us must seek from God that pardon that we cannot give ourselves.

One of the problems with forgiving is that we can confuse forgiveness with feelings and emotions. Not infrequently do priests in confession hear from someone who says they have tried to forgive but deep down they still feel the hurt or the anger. Hurt feelings don’t always go away.

That’s natural in our broken condition. But to forgive is an act of our will. We choose to do it, especially to imitate God Himself. If our feelings lag behind and continue to nag us, that doesn’t mean we haven’t forgiven. It shows that sin and hurt do deep and lasting damage. Often prayer and penance, and sometimes just the passage of time, are needed.

So important is our own joining Christ in forgiving others that Jesus not only encourages it, He warns us to do so. The magnificent parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Mt. 18: 21 – 35) ends with the warning that God’s forgiveness will be conditioned on our own.

But the deepest reality of our relation to God is that He is always willing to pardon us if we repent and turn back. God’s love leads to His mercy. And His mercy is completed when we join Him in forgiving those who trespass against us.