A small but helpful
guide to forgiveness
“Facing
Forgiveness: A Catholic’s Guide to Letting Go of Anger and Welcoming
Reconciliation,” by Loughlan Sofield, Carroll Juliano and Bishop Gregory
Aymond. Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame,
Reviewed
by Patricia Bartos Catholic News Service
Easter’s promise of redemption and
forgiveness offers hope to people whose lives are compromised by anger and
bitterness.
Such emotions imprison them in burning
resentment, obsessive thoughts of revenge or in cold behavior, refusing to deal
with the offender.
For Christians, “the ultimate example of
forgiveness is Jesus on the cross,” write the authors of the new book, “Facing
Forgiveness: A Catholic’s Guide to Letting Go of Anger and Welcoming
Reconciliation.”
“Forgiveness is neither a cognitive nor an
emotional response. Forgiveness is an act of the will. It is the choice to let
go of the desire to get even with an offending party,” they write.
The three authors, a “brother-sister-bishop
team,” distill their experiences gathered over many years of teaching and
counseling into a small but helpful book on the dynamics of forgiving.
The topic of forgiveness, they write, “is
like a magnet that draws people into its field.”
Co-authors Brother Loughlan Sofield, a Missionary
Servant of the Most Holy Trinity, and Sister Carroll Juliano, a member of the
Society of the Holy Child Jesus, lead workshops on anger and forgiveness and
have written several earlier books. And Bishop Gregory M. Aymond of
“During counseling sessions, those who
chose forgiveness experienced a profound sense of freedom and would often
describe it as if a physical, emotional and spiritual weight had been lifted
from their shoulders,” they write.
The book pulls together 25 brief stories of
people who struggled to forgive, overcoming anger and
the depression such feelings often lead to.
“The main reason why people choose to
retain their anger and not forgive is, as they declare, ‘I don’t know how to
forgive.’ They may not know how to forgive because they lack human models of
forgiveness,” the authors write.
Readers may be inspired by the life
experiences of people profiled in the book, such as: a mother who was mired in
depression for years after her son died in the twin towers Sept. 11, 2001, a
Pakistani seminarian beaten and scarred for life because of his Christian
faith, and a sister who reached out immediately after an argument.
Again and again the authors share the small
miracles of reconciliation that result when someone makes a gesture of
forgiveness from the heart.
This passage from
Ezekiel opens a chapter on the hard feelings the descendants of J.R.R. Tolkien
experienced over disputes in filming his masterpiece, “The Lord of the Rings”:
“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I
will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
The book is an examination of conscience on
“letting go of anger and welcoming the gift of healing through forgiveness,”
Miami Archbishop John C. Favalora writes in his foreword. “Every sincere
penitent knows the treasure that forgiveness is for the spirit. It is
resurrection: It is life.”