Forgive and Feel Good

Matthew 18:21-22: Then Peter went up to him and said, 'Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?'  Jesus answered, 'Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.

How do we preach this to someone like Mr. Lauro Vizconde?  Convince him to forgive the killer who took the lives of his entire family in one blow. Or to the investors of Mr. Bernard Madoff - tell them to forgive him for defrauding them with their billions of dollars of investments to his ponzi scheme. It's hard. Forgiveness is one difficult virtue to follow towards the completion of living a Christian life.

The verse above is followed by the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.  To summarize, it is about a servant who asked his master to forgive him his debt. The master forgives him and lets him go his way.  Then, a co-servant approaches him and also asks for forgiveness for his debt but the servant had him thrown to jail.  The master heard about what happened and summoned the unforgiving servant and had him tortured until he could pay his debt.  Then the reading ends with And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart (Matthew 18:35).

So, the virtue of forgiveness would be easy to follow if we are humble enough to admit that we also need to be forgiven as well.  But may I add to this tip on how forgiving can be made easy?  I say Forgive and Feel Good.  If they say Forgive and Forget, again, I say Forgive and Feel Good.  More than the humility of knowing we need forgiveness,  forgiving is releasing ourselves from the bondage of anger and bitterness.  Forgiveness benefits the forgiver more than the forgiven.

Forgiveness gives us the power to be happy, stay happy and make others happy.  Do we wonder about God the Father's  power?  It is simply because He is a happy God, and He stays happy no matter how much we sin against Him and then He continues to make us happy.

So let's tell Mr. Vizconde and the Madoff investors, release yourself from the bondage of anger and bitterness, God forgives your sins and go and be happy.