God’s power to forgive is limitless. Our own ability to forgive is strengthened by our ability to call upon God for His help in our own efforts to offer forgiveness. Forgiveness does not happen in an instant. Before we can forgive, we must have the desire to forgive.
When Simon Wiesenthal was brought before the dying SS soldier, Karl, Karl told him his story, confessed his crimes, and asked for forgiveness. Wiesenthal had no time to assimilate and respond to this enormous plea. The desire to forgive had no chance to bloom with Wiesenthal. His Jewish theology and the circumstances he found himself in, would not allow for it.
From the moment of his encounter with Karl, Karl’s plea for forgiveness became one of the singular events of his life. He was not able to offer forgiveness to Karl before he died but he was so deeply effected that for the rest of his life he asked others, “What would you have done”? Had he not been so deeply moved, I would not be here, over 60 years later, writing my own thoughts and trying to answer the question that haunted Wiesenthal for the rest of his life. We also would not have had the collective thoughts from generations of readers of his book, The Sunflower, thoughts from classrooms, discussion groups, private reflections and the published responses found in the book along with Simon’s story.
Why is this question so important? The short answer would be simply that forgiveness is freeing for both the giver and the receiver. To forgive frees us from vengeance, bitterness, the sense that we are victims; all feelings that can only corrode the soul.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are welded together in Christian thought. God is all forgiving and merciful and we are called to be as He is. However, to forgive does not mean to be reconciled. Reconciliation is a restoration of the relationship between the victim and the victimizer. Reconciliation suggests that there is a change in the behavior of the victimizer. If there is no change, there can be no reconciliation. So, we can forgive but not be reconciled.
By going through the process of forgiving, we are freed from evil’s power over us. Thus, with forgiveness offered, we are able to go forward in our lives. The lessons of evil have the power to teach the world that there is a better way. Forgiveness becomes a tool of God’s hand that takes evil and makes it an instrument of good. St. Augustine wrote, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to allow no evil to exist.”
We have many modern day examples of the power of forgiveness becoming a tool for good. Mary Karen Read is one of the 32 victims of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. After her death, at age 18, notes on forgiveness were found in her private journal. Two months before her death, she wrote, “When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.”
Remarkably, this was just one of a series of quotes on forgiveness that Mary had been collecting since her mid-teens. The notebook, now used by Mary's father to help others, shows most profoundly the healing and comfort that can be found in forgiveness. It has become God’s tool for bringing good out of evil and showing the way out of pain and sadness.
Holocaust survivors remind us that if you have not been through it, you cannot understand the depth of the pain. Mary’s family echoes this same feeling. On a very small scale that can in no way be equated with Wiesenthal’s experience or the Read family’s loss, I found myself being called for years to forgive an individual who was instrumental in causing great havoc and wreckage in my life.
Until I could forgive, I could not free myself of the fears and insecurities that had settled around my heart and mind. But with forgiveness came the sensation of shedding the anger, hurt, bitterness and fear that was physically felt as it flow from my body through my fingertips and feet. The power of those past evil acts literally flowed out of me leaving a cleansed space from which I could start again and grow in personal strength. Forgiveness became not only a spiritual and mental experience, but also a physical experience.
Wiesenthal may not have given Karl what he was asking for but through thought and action, I believe that he was clearly moved in the direction of forgiveness. There simply was not enough time for Karl to show by his actions that he was truly remorseful and changed. But in those shared hours, Simon and Karl became God’s tool for good to emerge from great evil. And what of Karl’s plea for forgiveness? Simon, by hearing his plea, was led on a lifelong quest regarding God’s expectations of us. Karl, as an instrument of evil, was given a penance commensurate with his crime. He suffered tremendously. His suffering was not just physical. He suffered in conscience. He suffered the loss of the one thing that would have given him comfort and consolation: the nearness of his beloved mother.
But even here I see the hand of God at work. By not having the comfort of his mother, he was left truly alone with his thoughts. We cannot judge the quality and value of Karl’s remorse. We can only know that by his punishment he was led to reflect on his actions, arrive at deep remorse and then beg for forgiveness.
The object of his quest , a Jew, should not be judged either. He had nothing else to lose. His life was at an end. His confession and expression of remorse was true remorse. He did not spare himself. He did not excuse him. He did not explain himself. He accepted the grace that comes from accepting the knowledge of his crimes.
As I read Edward Flannery’s conclusion in his own response to Wiesenthal question, “What would I do?”, I could not help but identify completely with his words. I take Flannery’s words here now and embrace them wholly as my own.
“ . . .I would have – I do hope – forgiven him and, as an obstinate believer, suggested to him that he make his peace with God by asking for His forgiveness, and, taking full advantage of the situation, uttered a prayer for the repose of his soul and those of the victims of his inhuman behavior."
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