“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

There’s great power in the words “Father, forgive them.” That’s precisely the reason they are often so hard to say. Although “they know not what they do,” Jesus does know. And he wants to forgive them anyway. We know their salvation is ultimately contingent on their repentance, on them accepting that forgiveness. Nonetheless, Jesus asks for them to be forgiven even before they realize what they’ve done, before they realize just how much it cost Jesus to offer that prayer.

It is this weightiness, this cost of forgiveness that sometimes gets overlooked in our personal journey through forgiving and being forgiven. “Forgive your enemies” might be easy for us to say to someone who has been hurt, but precisely because it is so easy to say, we can forget how difficult it is to do. When said too hastily without a proper appreciation of the cost of that task, such words can seem to dismiss the weight of what someone has suffered. “You have to forgive them,” when said to a victim, can sound like “what happened to you isn’t a big deal.”

It is sad that this needs to be said, but the Church never intends to dismiss the suffering of victims. She stands and is meant to stand squarely with the victims of injustice. She is meant to offer healing to the wounded and to defend the dignity of the victimized. All this even while she also teaches them of the need to forgive those who hurt them.

The month of November is traditionally the time we pray for the souls of the faithful departed. This practice rests on the Church’s teaching about purgatory. Purgatory is a confusing idea for many people, especially when set side-by-side with Jesus’ offer of forgiveness. Jesus died for our sins, after all. He prayed for our forgiveness. Why would God need people who have already been forgiven to go through extra suffering just to go to heaven? Wouldn’t that undermine the value of Christ’s sacrifice? These kinds of questions reveal the same misconception that causes people to use our teaching on forgiveness to dismiss the severity of a victim’s suffering: The misconception that forgiveness is the same thing as reconciliation; or that forgiveness is the same thing as justification; or that forgiveness is the same thing as sanctification. All of these concepts are closely related, but they are not the same. And reducing them to a single concept can cause serious harm.

The classic analogy is a broken window. A child playing with a ball breaks the neighbors window after being told not to play near it. Repentant, the child tells his father and they both go to the neighbor to apologize. The neighbor forgives the child because he sees his sincerity. The window is still broken, however. So, a full reconciliation involves repairing the window. So, the child agrees to mow some lawns until the window is paid for. If we die repentant of our sins, we are forgiven. Yet, every sin we have committed has caused damage and incurred a kind of spiritual debt to God and neighbor. This is true even if we never see the debt for what it is. If we have not already sought out the payment of that debt through penitence, works of mercy, indulgences, and pious use of the sacraments, then it still needs to be paid because God is also just. He is not content to pretend the harm never happened. He wants to repair it. Many souls find themselves standing before God in judgment and for the very first time see the debts they’ve left unpaid. So long as we are humble and repentant enough to accept God’s justice, purgatory allows us to pay that debt after death. God mercifully allows us to pay the debt to his justice. It’s all a gift and all possible only by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We don’t really pay back the debt so much as allow ourselves to be conformed to Christ who paid it for us.

We see this idea of conformity in Romans 8:29-30 where St. Paul tells us, “those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified.” There is the call, the justification, the glorification. But these are not simple individual steps. They are interrelated and the Church’s long reflection on this process has caused us to speak of what takes place during and between these steps. The call is the offer of forgiveness which can be met with acceptance and repentance, which in turn allows justification to begin, which in turn allows them to start growing in holiness (sanctification), which in turn leads to becoming glorified with God in heaven.

For the purpose of this reflection, we can simply point out that forgiveness is at the beginning of that process and glorification at the end. When Jesus forgives his attackers from the cross, he does not magically and instantly jump over his suffering to joyfully sharing the company of his attackers in heaven. Yet, he does begin the process that will hopefully lead to that final glory. In between, however, is a whole lot of justification, paying of debts, and sanctification. All of those steps will require the cooperation of the sinner. 

Turning back to the hurting victim who needs to forgive a perpetrator, we can use this understanding to approach it with greater sensitivity. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Just as most of us have incurred spiritual debts we don’t yet see, so the perpetrator of any crime likely does not see the cost of what they’ve inflicted on someone else. It also means that people not involved in the crime may not recognize the harm suffered by the victims either. How many of the people directly involved in Christ’s crucifixion ended up in purgatory at some point? Yet Jesus offered them forgiveness first. He extended to them, right then and there, the possibility of drawing on his infinite sacrifice of love in payment of a debt they could never pay themselves.

From the perspective of a victim, it helps to know that forgiving their attacker does not dismiss the cost of their crime. It does not invalidate their suffering. When we are the victim, when we are speaking to victims, we need to be clear what we’re asking of someone in the command to forgive. Honestly recognizing the spiritual or emotional or psychological or physical cost of the crime is part of what makes forgiveness so powerful. The greater the cost of sin, the greater value there is in forgiving it. Perhaps it will help to conclude by saying what forgiveness is not before summarizing what it is:

To forgive does not require us to pretend it never happened.

To forgive does not require us to pretend it didn’t hurt.

To forgive does not require us to forget.

To forgive does not require us to trust the other person again.

To forgive does not require us to resume a relationship with them again.

To forgive does not require us to stop those in authority from justly punishing them.

Ultimately, to forgive our enemies means that, even though they don’t know how much they’ve cost us, we choose to put that cost into the hands of God. We do this knowing that, one way or another Jesus Christ will pay that cost - he already has, in fact. To forgive is to give up any claim to vengeance. It is to surrender the option of taking it upon myself to extract from them what they cost me. To forgive is to surrender that debt to God in hope that He will not only pay the debt of justice but will also bring about the sinner’s conversion and cooperation in the payment of that debt. To forgive is to take that first step which we hope leads to their conversion.

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” But you do, and you forgave them anyway. Help us do likewise.