To forgive others is something difficult for most people because most people do not know how forgiveness works. The first thing that we have to learn about forgiveness is that it isn’t much about the people who have offended you or have harmed you, but about yourself, about your own wellbeing, about your own spiritual growth. By forgiving others you’re not exactly doing them a favor; you are doing yourself a favor. The sooner you forgive, the sooner your wound heals, and then you become strong and wholesome again.
What happens when we don’t forgive others? The lack of forgiveness indicates that you haven’t come to terms with what happened to you. In other words, you have an unresolved issue, you have something to work on. When we don’t forgive, we spent a lot of time and energy thinking about the unresolved issue, we tell ourselves that we want “justice” but what we really want is vengeance, we want to know that the person who offended us or harmed us gets reprehended and punished; sometimes, we even want for them a punishment so harsh that it is way too unproportionate to their offense.
An unresolved matter is the venom that can destroy your life, a venom that poisons your soul and has the potential to damage it beyond repair. When you have unresolved issues, you neglect a lot of things that you should do for yourself; you focus on those unresolved issues and don’t pay attention to what you should be doing to better yourself, to grow on your relationship with God, you just waste your time, your energy, your talents and even your resources. And when it comes to time, we have be aware that we might run out if suddenly and that’s quite a serious matter.
Mathew 5:25 instructs to settle matters as soon as possible; this gospel verse reminds us that we should resolve our differences before we die and since we know that we can die anytime we better hurry up and forgive those who we need to forgive. Remember, you need to forgive them much more than they need to be forgiven. It’s about you, not them. That’s why you should always forgive, even when the offenders do not ask to be forgiven. You don’t want to get to the heavenly court with unresolved issues. Saint Paul in his letter to the Ephesians makes this instruction sound even more urgent. He said: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” (Cf. Eph. 4:26-27)
This sense of urgency that Saint Paul conveys is not an exaggeration at all; we should always be ready to leave this world, we can die in an instant. Not everyone has the time to prepare themselves for their departure from this world. Many people are not given the opportunity to know that they are going to die soon, that they need to prepare themselves for that moment. Now, forgiving those who have offended us is something we should do not only because we can die anytime and we can be in trouble before Christ but also because of the immediate reward we get, namely: freedom, piece of mind, healing, joy and spiritual growth. May God give us the grace to forgive and may the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. (Cf. Col. 3:15).