Forgiveness

This virtue is related to the opening up of our heart, to an increase in its capacity. Other people’s faults have to find room, there has to be space for whatever they’ve done to our detriment, even their excuses, never mind whether we find these sufficient or true. All their weaknesses have to fit in.

It’s often such a struggle to accept others as they are. Because we demand that they be as we want them to be. But it’s not like that. They’ve done us some harm, wittingly or unwittingly, They’ve got some strange habit or other.

They may have been brought up differently from us, they may have certain external habits which jar, certain weaknesses, certain expressions of fallen, sinful human nature, just as we most certainly have, too. So God calls upon us to open our heart and to put our fellow human beings inside, as they are, so that we can love them as our brothers and sisters.