“Then Peter approaching asked him, ‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I say to you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times’ ”(Matthew.18:21-22).

What does forgiveness mean, and how can we tell we have truly forgiven, even one time?

Pope Francis explains that “The joy of God is the joy of forgiveness... But this is not sentimentalism or bland 'do-goodism'; on the contrary, mercy is the true force that can save man and the world from the 'cancer' of sin, from moral and spiritual malaise.”¹

Forgiveness is mercy. Although it involves purifying and directing our emotions, forgiveness is, at its root, an act of the will, directed by the intellect. It begins with the mental act of “accepting ‘no’ for an answer when we wanted ‘yes’, and being at peace with that,” according to forgiveness researcher Dr. Fred Luskin.² . Being at peace does not mean condoning a brother’s sin against us. It means accepting that the offense occurred and responding wisely, mercifully. Forgiveness, Luskin says, is “a trainable skill, just like learning to throw a baseball.”³

A key component is rewriting our personal narratives. The mind is naturally inclined to weave our memories into stories. ⁴ I need not recall every time my grandmother baked cookies for me or listened with enthusiasm as I shared the ups and downs of childhood. Instead, I string just a few of these anecdotes onto the narrative thread of supportive, encouraging Grandma. This is an efficient way to process the massive volume of memories the human mind must manage. But we can get the story wrong.

One of the greatest obstacles to forgiveness is the grievance story, where the narrator assembles memories into a story portraying himself primarily as a victim. While each of us is, at times, the victim of forces of nature and of thoughtless or unkind behavior from others, Dr. Luskin explains that within each grievance story is the seed of a victory story, where the victim is transformed into a hero. What we need to change the story is more data.

Consider the following:

The last graph, y= x², contains the same two data points as the previous one, but it is not represented by the simple line we first inferred. Our view of the graph changed once we uncovered more data.

A grievance story includes data about what happened to the narrator. Like the two data points on our original graph, it is incomplete. What it lacks is the narrator’s response of the mercy that is forgiveness.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived four Nazi concentration camps. He could not simply forget the atrocities to which he was subjected, but he placed them in the context of the mercy he and his fellows chose in response. One heroic prisoner in Frankl’s circle managed to obtain a rare treat: a sugar cube. Like the others, he generally received only the bare minimum of bread and water neceessary for subsistence; surely he hungered deeply for that bit of sugar. Yet he responded to intense want, not by holding on more closely to the little he had, but by choosing generosity. Instead of consuming the sugar cube, he laid it on an adjacent prisoner’s bed as a gift. The recipient then laid the sugar cube on his next neighbor’s bed. The cube travelled throughout the entire circle of prisoners; each made the audacious choice to respond to deprivation with the “love that saves.”⁶. Frankl explained that “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ⁵This response was the seed of their interior liberation.

When we have been hurt deeply, we often respond, not just once, but every time we consider anew the action which hurt us. In that space of consideration lies our power to choose the freedom of forgiveness.

Dr. Luskin advises that we first accept reality, and accept our feelings about it. Dr. Frankl and his companions knew they were in a concentration camp; they acknowledged their pain, cold, hunger, and sorrow. When abandoned by a parent, spouse, or friend, or devastated by an incurable illness or an accident, we, too, must accept the truth of the matter and accept our feelings of grief. Only that which is wrong and has hurt us needs to be forgiven. Admitting the wrong and the hurt is a prerequisite for forgiveness.

In addition, we need to disentangle our unenforceable standards for other people from the legitimate, just desire at the root of our distress. Frankl and his fellow prisoners had a reasonable desire to be treated with a civility which recognized their human dignity. Yet their captors did precisely the opposite, and nothing Frankl or his fellows expected would have changed that. Instead of writing mental rules that human beings should treat others with respect and applying those rules to their captors, they accepted reality and found freedom in the opportunity to show mercy toward each other.

Forgiveness emancipates our minds from the shackles of anger and despair so our rationality can emerge. Instead of being buffeted by currents of unchosen emotion, we can reason about how to respond to painful circumstances. It is in this rationality that we embody the image of our Creator. The rational mind, free from vengeance and all other forms of unforgiveness, is equipped to will mercy. We can choose mercy for the unborn child thought to be an inconvenience, the frail elderly and disabled who require our assistance, and even enemies who have hurt us immensely. In doing so, we respond the other as a living image of God.

Pope Francis reminds us that “If there is no mercy in our hearts, if we do not experience the joy of forgiveness, we are not in communion with God, even if we observe all the commandments, because it is love that saves, not the simple observance of rules. It is in love for God and for our neighbor that the commandments are fulfilled.” ⁷