Why We Need A National Day of Forgiveness

Would a National Day of Forgiveness or even Month of Forgiveness help heal some of the divisions in the country?

I don’t often write in this space about the Sunday gospel, leaving that task to those more expert. However, this week’s gospel on forgiveness couldn’t come at a more opportune time. There seems to be no end to the nation’s polarization. Perhaps we need a National Day of Forgiveness. It would be a start.

In the gospel of Matthew, the apostle Peter announces his willingness to forgive others seven times. Jesus says nothing less than seventy times seven times will do. In other words, endless forgiveness.

Forgiveness rarely comes easily. (Photo courtesy of Jessica Key).

Forgiveness doesn’t come easily to me. We all suffer some wound or injustice that continues to sting. Many wounds seem unforgivable. I’m thinking of those who’ve suffered sexual or physical abuse. Those who experience racism daily. Who endure the travesties of war.

There are those who have contracted COVID-19 or lost loved ones to the virus. Who can blame them for being angry and resentful ?

When I find it hard to forgive, I often think of a tiny lady from Terre Haute, Indiana, whom I had the privilege to interview for PBS-TV. Eva Kor lost her mother, father and two sisters in the Holocaust. She and her twin sister Miriam were experimented upon at Auschwitz in a Nazi quest to unlock the secrets of genetics.

Miriam eventually died an early death, probably precipitated by those experiments.

Still, Eva found it in her heart to stand in front of Auschwitz on the 50th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, and with TV cameras rolling, she forgave her Nazi torturers. “It is time to heal our souls,” she told fellow camp survivors.

“It was as if a sack of stones I had been carrying on my back had been lifted,” she told me later. “I was finally free.”

Holocaust survivor Eva Kor became an international abassador for reconciliation. She publicly forgave her Nazi captors on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp at Auschwitz. (Photo courtesy of C.A.N.D.L.E.S Museum in Terre Haute, IN.

Most of us would be hard-pressed to forgive on Eva’s grand scale. But here’s the thing. I believe Eva could forgive her Nazi captors because she was first able to forgive herself.

She had to forgive herself for stealing raw potatoes to survive, because taking those potatoes meant some other prisoner would have less to eat. She had to forgive herself for being the healthier of the twin sisters and outliving Miriam.

I believe Eva entered into a profound experience of humility when she was able to have compassion for her own actions. When she could experience compassion for herself, she was able to extend that compassion to the actions of others - even acts as atrocious as those committed by her Nazi captors.

Sadly, Eva passed awayt on the Fourth of July last year at the age of 85. Her legacy lives on in the C.A.N.D.L.E.S Holocaust Museum she established in Terre Haute to honor children killed in the war.

A handwritten, handpainted page from a manuscript of The Rule of St. Benedict, showing the first words of the famous Prologue to The Rule. (Photo courtesy of Our Lady of Grace Monastery).

This past weekend, I guided an online retreat for Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Indiana on “The Rule of St. Benedict,” which contains enormous wisdom for those of us living today. As far back as 1,600-years ago, St. Benedict recognized that revenge and punishment doesn’t lead to healing.

More important, he said, is to do what you can to encourage others to reform their bad behavior and to make amends. “Hate faults” but “love the person,” he wrote, asking us to remember our own failings, even if we fail at getting others to recognize theirs.

It helps me too to recall something the monk and great spirituality writer Thomas Merton wrote after observing passersby on a busy corner in Louisville, Kentucky:

“If only we could see the secret beauty, the depths of each other’s hearts,” Merton wrote. “There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.”

Can we recall the many times that have we been forgiven for our own behavior and faults? Can we experience compassion for ourselves in our failings? Can we then extend that compassion to the shortcomings of others?

This sign marks the spot at Fourth and Walnut Streets, Louisville where Thomas Merton realized “If only we could see the secret beauty, the depths of each other’s hearts.”