Transcript

Edmund Mitchell: Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Real and True Podcast. I’m Edmund Mitchell. 

Emily Mentock: And I’m Emily Mentock:

Edmund Mitchell: And on the Real + True Podcast, we’ll be exploring our mission: unlocking the Catechism for the modern world. And today we have an exciting episode on one of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We’ve been walking through the Lord’s Prayer in this pillar, and we’re tracking the units.

We’re on Unit 46, is that right, Emily? 

Emily Mentock: 46, yes.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. So we’re in the fourth pillar, and we’re on one of the petitions that is “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us.” Emily, are you excited about this episode? I know that when I was reading—it’s very short; these sections now in these units. It’s very short.

But I find myself staying on some of the paragraphs a lot longer because they’re a lot more—I don’t know how to describe—they’re punchier; they  focus in on a certain word, like “as we forgive those” or “this phrase is wild.” This is like the second time we’ve heard that.

So I don’t know if you want to  share a little bit like your experience of this unit. 

Emily Mentock: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s how I felt through this whole pillar. It’s the shortest of the four pillars of the Catechism, and going through line-by-line in the Lord’s Prayer, there’s not that many paragraphs that cover it, but you’re right; there is so much spiritual depth there. 

I think back to when we were first planning out this entire project, one of our advisors at the time invited us to consider actually starting the whole project with the fourth pillar on prayer because it is so relevant to our lives; to our relationship with God.

And it really just naturally invites that sort of reflective, prayerful reading of the Catechism that maybe going through every section of sacramental or moral theology does not. We ended up going in order, because we wanted to honor the way that the creators of the Catechism put it together.

But, now that we’ve been in this pillar, I completely understand what she was saying, because you’re right. It ponders and reflects on each word of this prayer and then brings forward for us the truths of our faith that we are truly praying as we pray this very short prayer—the Lord’s Prayer— including about forgiveness.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And what I hope in people listening to these podcast episodes is that we’re kind of equipping people. We’re exploring the section of the Catechism or a reading of the Catechism paragraphs. And then we’re exploring what are tools equipping a catechist and evangelists, a parent, a small group leader; someone who’s interested in evangelization and catechesis.

What are some things we could add or conversations we could have that would help people? 

And we’re walking through the Lord’s Prayer. The first three petitions concern God, His name, His Kingdom, and His will. The first three petitions are about God, and then the next four are about our needs.

So this one on forgiveness, it’s an interesting topic because maybe we have lots of different experiences of forgiveness maybe as a kid or maybe; maybe today. 

So in this episode, we talked about our focus being some of the myths around forgiveness and trying to walk through some of the common myths that we might encounter with people we talk to about the Gospel or in official catechesis and evangelization in parish ministry work.

So in this one in particular, Emily, do you feel like this is a topic that people encounter lots of myths as well, either as a catechist and evangelist or just in their daily life?

Emily Mentock: Yes, absolutely. I think that needing the call to forgiveness is so essential; so central to our Christian faith because Jesus gave us a very direct example of what it means to show mercy and to forgive—even in the most challenging of circumstances. 

And I think over time, there have been times where forgiveness and mercy have expanded into our world. And then there are other times where there are stark differences between what the world might teach us of what forgiveness or justice or compassion would mean, and what Jesus is actually teaching us to do,  which is asking the Father to forgive us as we forgive others. 

So I really love our approach; we want to do mercy myth-busting to help make sure that you as a catechist—or in your own life—understand what the Church really teaches about mercy and forgiveness from this part of the Lord’s Prayer.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I know for me growing up, the Lord’s Prayer was a memorized prayer. And then even when I got more excited about evangelization and discipleship and catechesis, I still thought, “Ah, the Lord’s Prayer. It’s just a memorized prayer that helps us turn our hearts to God.” But it’s really rich in the life of Jesus that we’re supposed to model.

And so reading through these paragraphs—so the paragraph section we call it reading a paragraph—is 2838 – 2845. And when you read through these, really what Jesus was doing in teaching the Lord’s Prayer and this petition, is teaching us how to live and love like Him. 

And so I think we have to remind ourselves again, this is a common theme; that this might seem obvious to us in a post-Christian world, but to forgive as we forgive others; to ask God to forgive us as we forgive others was a really radical idea. It’s not obvious; it was hard. Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness were actually hard. They weren’t just cute quotes on a painting somewhere, they were radical ideas. 

And in paragraph 2840; 2842, it talks about the word “as” that it’s a radical idea that

Emily Mentock: Yeah.

Edmund Mitchell: We would forgive as we forgive others. 

Emily Mentock: Yeah. Help us understand that, Edmund. So through all of the model of Jesus’ life, we’re supposed to be doing things as Jesus did it, right?

Like we say, “Let us pray as Jesus taught us.” But this almost seems to be flipping it the other way; asking God to forgive us as we forgive others. Is God really going to model how we forgive others in His forgiveness of us? Help us make sense of that.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah, that’s a really good point. It is interesting, the focus, right? How could it have been said differently instead of, “Lord, we’re asking you to forgive us our sins as we then go and forgive others.” I guess it could have been different. It could have been “forgive us so that we could forgive others” or “forgive us our sins.”

Emily Mentock: The way that I grew up thinking about this as a kid—which now I have a deeper understanding of that—is “God’s only going to show the forgiveness that I show. God’s not going to show forgiveness to me if I don’t forgive others.”

And so then you end up in this place of trying to force yourself to forgive out of fear that then you won’t be forgiven, which as we learned—even going back to the awesome Proclamation video for this unit about the neuroscience and physiological response of forgiveness—you actually can’t force it by just by thinking.

Emily Mentock: But that is what I remember as a kid; having this fear that “If I don’t forgive, then God won’t forgive me.” Mm-hmm. But is that really what we’re supposed to be learning here? 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I mean, it’s everything in balance. “The heart of the Gospel is that God became man so that we might become God” is what the saint said, even though it’s kind of weird to say we might become God. But that’s how radical it should be. And so Jesus in giving us the Lord’s Prayer, the Sacraments, giving us His life, is really challenging us to become just like Him. And so it really is this challenge for us to forgive in the same way that God forgives.

And I think throughout my own life so many times where you kind of have that guilty feeling, but even just a guilty feeling of sins that you’ve done where you think “Man, no one would forgive me for this” or “This makes me a really bad person. I can’t undo this thing I did.”

And so what was coming to mind as you were talking is  there’s two extremes. One extreme is being too forgiving. Like maybe we’ve met someone— or maybe we’ve been that person—where you could be forgiving of everything. Like, “Oh, it’s fine.” It’s kind of that type of person. 

And then the opposite extreme is someone that holds grudges forever. It’s like “Back in 1995 you cut me off of traffic, and now I still hold onto that grudge.” And both are not Christlike; both are not the divine life that the Trinity is giving us. That’s not what we’re called to.

And so I think there’s that balance. And so hopefully as we’re going through these myths, you can kind of see this balancing act of being too forgiving; forgiving everything—which isn’t even really forgiveness, honestly—reading through our outline.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. I feel like that’s a term to watch.

We are called to always forgive, but that’s not the same thing as reconciliation. One of the myths we’re going to bust is the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, and “Why does God call us to forgiveness, but not to reconciliation?”

One thing that really was helpful to me in clarifying this understanding that I developed in childhood about this line of the Lord’s Prayer, is from paragraph 2840.

The reason why we’re asking God to forgive us as we forgive is because we can’t. We can’t even be forgiven without forgiving others. It says “[The] outpouring of mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us.”

So it’s less about whether or not God is willing to forgive us, and more about “we’ll never be able to truly receive and fully receive God’s mercy if our hearts are held up in resentment.” So that’s why we’re asking God to forgive us as we forgive others, so hopefully we can move toward forgiveness; move toward healing so that we can receive the mercy we need from God.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And a lot of—before we dive into these myths—a lot of these themes I hope the listeners are hearing, which are our interior disposition; our heart, and also this union that is sought; there’s this seeking of union. 

And so if we hold this type of disposition of our heart towards other people, how is God going to have that same interaction with you? How’s God going to have a better interaction with you if you have this disposition towards relationships where you’re either too permissive and then you have no boundaries, or you’re too—whatever the word would be—like too vengeful or resentful?

Emily Mentock: Yeah. I’m trying to think of some of the words that we learned from the Proclamation video that what does neuroscience see that when we don’t forgive, the emotions that we have when your brain activity lights up when you think about a person or a situation where it’s lacking forgiveness, what does your brain activity look like?

And it looks like anger and resentment and that vengefulness, which is very different than when you have forgiven someone. Your brain actually responds differently. It doesn’t mean that the sadness of that situation completely goes away, but it’s not tapping into that anger kind of trauma response part of the brain. 

And the idea that it’s this physiological side of it takes us into our first myth. So the first myth we want to address about forgiveness is that forgiveness is a purely emotional release. “I forgive because I feel better.” So while it’s true that there are emotions tied into your brain, we know—both scientifically and from the Catechism—that it’s not just an emotional release for forgiveness.

What are some of your thoughts on that, Edmund? 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Writing all these scripts, I’ve realized you can definitely tell the things I’m uncontrollably interested in. And it’s psychology, neurology,

Emily Mentock: Journaling, 

Edmund Mitchell: Journaling for sure. But it was so fascinating. I really encourage people to go watch the Proclamation video for this unit. But it’s so fascinating just all the things that you mentioned about the science behind these things. 

And so it is true—in a way—that you could tell by science if you’ve forgiven someone. They did these studies where if you bring up a memory and you haven’t forgiven someone, your fight/flight/freeze response goes into effect all of these things.

And there’s something that happens where science couldn’t probably exactly place it because it’s not quantifiable, it’s qualitative. It’s a story, a narrative; it’s a framework. And those are hard to turn into math, but there’s something that changes. So while the temptation is to say, “Well, forgive others so that you experience that freedom of the emotional release,” that isn’t the heart of why we should forgive.

The heart of why we should forgive is not just for our own personal game. And I’ve heard this before—and I think from well-intentioned people—where it’s like, “Well, just let it go.” And I think if we don’t balance that with the rest of the Gospel, you have people who grow up thinking, “Well, just let everything go. Just let it go. Why feel this way? Why have these bad emotions?”

And I think another thing if you go back and listen to—oh my gosh, one of the past 

Emily Mentock: Brya Hanan 

Edmund Mitchell: You go back and listen to some of those things, like emotions don’t have a moral value to them. An emotion is just like the weather. Like, “It’s raining today. It’s cloudy today. It’s sunny today.” Like, I’m angry because this thing happened. 

One of the things I’ve had to learn is it’s not bad for someone to experience a negative emotion. We don’t want to stay in those negative emotions, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. And so we need to avoid pitching forgiveness as a way to just be free of negative feelings. 

Emily Mentock: Yeah, absolutely. I think that this is a great time to invite people to go back and watch the Brya Hanan episode about forgiving your mother and father. This was related to the fourth Commandment—especially for people who had some childhood trauma, which is one of her specialties. Like real trauma, not just sometimes fighting with your parents.

But I think the other one that  I would really invite people to go back and watch is an early unit from pillar one where we talk about the heart and it says—pulling from the Catechism— “The heart is the dwelling place. The heart is where I really am” (CCC 2563).

Or this new encyclical that we had last year, Dilexit Nos, on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And that is so relevant to this part of forgiveness because the Catechism says in paragraph 2840, “In refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters, our hearts are closed and their hardness makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love.”

So again, making it very clear that forgiveness is not just about how externally how we relate to people. It’s actually about in our hearts, are we really forgiving or not?

So the people who are maybe just letting things go and trying to move on to avoid conflict—or things like that—that is not necessarily true forgiveness from your heart; where you’re honest about the hurt that has been done against you, and honest about forgiving that person from your heart so that you can receive God’s merciful love in your own life.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And the truth is that forgiveness doesn’t always feel great. It doesn’t always come with an emotional release that you’re letting go of all these negative things. 

Emily Mentock: Right, That’s true. 

Edmund Mitchell: It was probably hard. It probably wasn’t consoling for Jesus to forgive the people crucifying Him. It just is a thing that He does out of obedience to the Father and out of this humbleness—this is going into the next myth—but out of this humbleness that “There but for the grace of God go I.” Like, “I also could sin. I also could wrong someone.”

Emily Mentock: Right. You’re right. So the next myth that we want to bust with the Catechism is showing mercy means condoning the wrong the other person did.

So, did Jesus condone His own crucifixion by calling up to His Father and say, “Forgive them” and forgiving the people who were hurting Him, or forgiving Peter who betrayed Him? Was that condoning those actions? No. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is something maybe a lot of us struggle with just in general. It’s hard. That’s the first feeling for me that pops up is if I forgive this, it’s either going to happen again or I’m allowing this person to get off easy.

Like if I forgive this, then this person doesn’t feel the weight of what they did, or they don’t understand what they did, or that it’s too easy for them. They should have to work for it harder, or they should have to suffer more for this, or justice should come out.

Emily Mentock:  But mercy is not the same thing as dismissing the sin. That is what we learned from Jesus’ example that it doesn’t make it any less wrong what they did, but it is important that we still show mercy by forgiving the other because it’s also a way to call them to conversion and healing. 

When we withhold forgiveness, that cycle of sin continues because we’re hardening our own hearts. We’re not inviting them to—like when you say to someone, “I forgive you for doing this to me,” you are also recognizing and stating clearly that that action is in need of forgiveness. 

So I think that we see that prayer strengthens us to hold someone accountable. And we’ll get into maybe next about reconciliation or what that means and doesn’t mean, but forgiving someone does the Christian thing of always hoping for their own conversion— in addition to healing your own heart by not holding onto resentment. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. The thing that comes to mind with this myth in particular is like, “What is it that we actually want?” Or “What is it that we do when we forgive?” We kind of say that we no longer want or desire something from the other person, in a way.

Hear me out; tell me what you think about this. But it’s like when you get wronged or hurt by someone, the first immediate thing you want is for the other person to realize that they hurt you. 

And then you want them to fix it or do something different, or promise they’ll never do it again, or you want them to get arrested, or some type of penalty or justice. You want something to happen and you could go years feeling like you want them to do something; you want something. 

And what comes to mind for me is that forgiveness—which you said—there’s different topics here; justice and mercy are two different topics. Forgiveness and reunion or reconciliation are two different topics. 

I’m thinking of situations like in one of the videos where we talked about the victim of a crime or the brother of a victim.

Emily Mentock: Restorative justice.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Emily Mentock: Restorative justice; this merciful form of justice that gives space to forgiveness. And it offers an opportunity for reconciliation. But that’s not mandatory for forgiveness. Forgiveness and that reconciliation through restorative justice are two different things.

There are many victims of crimes who I think can experience forgiveness in their heart without reconciling with the person who hurt them. And that’s okay. 

Edmund Mitchell: And there’s so many—I’m thinking about in particular the prison situation. It might not be in your power to give mercy because you’re not the judge or you have no control over the legal state. You can give forgiveness.

If someone’s in jail, there might not be the same type of physical reuniting with this person because they’re in jail now. And it’s like “ I’m stopping you.” 

And so we seek those things; we seek mercy when we can. We seek reconciliation and reunion with our brothers and sisters and the family of God, and we seek forgiveness when we can. 

But the forgiveness one is the one that’s really interesting—because now that I’m realizing it— in the Lord’s Prayer it doesn’t say “Show us mercy Lord as we show mercy.” The heart of it is forgiveness. 

Emily Mentock: Yeah. 

Edmund Mitchell: Which is the saying, “There’s no more projects that need to be focused on concerning this event; this action that happened to me. I am letting go of this.” 

Now there might still be justice or restitution or reconciliation that needs to happen, but the forgiveness part is—you don’t even have to understand it—but it’s like, “I am letting go of wanting something from you; wanting us to talk about it; wanting you to understand. I’m letting go of that and moving forward.”

Emily Mentock: Right. Exactly. But it also is an important—this takes us into another myth—to acknowledge that it’s not true that forgiveness is just a one-time event that you forgive once and the relationship is fully restored.  We need to keep our hearts in a state of forgiveness.

The Catechism says in paragraph 2841 that mercy has no limit. And so  it’s not like, “Okay, well I’ve dished out forgiveness one time, and that’s the end.” We need to continually forgive. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. With a lot of these things in the Christian life and trying to learn to act as God loves,  it is not like you wake up one day and go, “I’m following Jesus and now everything’s perfect.” 

And the same with  forgiveness. Paragraph 2843 says, “It’s not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.”

There are a lot of people who will respond—esspecially when you’re teaching on this topic—because there’s a lot of experiences that maybe they thought they had fully forgiven someone, or they thought they had been forgiven and got over it. But those—like it says—it’s not in our power to just turn off those feelings; those feelings still come up. 

And so we still have to actively choose forgiveness. Now that doesn’t mean you have to say sorry every single day for something you did 30 years ago, but there is an act of choosing this forgiveness instead of—like we said—choosing “I want something to happen. I want this person to do something” or “I want something from them.”

Emily Mentock: Right. It is freeing your own heart from being a slave to that hurt or that wrongdoing against you. Forgiving someone is not about the other person even being sorry for it.  It’s actually about what’s happening in your own heart.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Emily Mentock: And not what’s happening necessarily in the physical reality surrounding that situation. So another myth that we are busting is that to forgive is to forget; that forgiveness means it erases the memory or the hurt of the offense. But that is not true. Like you said in paragraph 2843, It’s not in our power to forget that offense; but in forgiving that offense, we are healing our own heart.

That doesn’t mean that the situation in reality is going to be fully reconciled for whatever reason—whether it’s an extreme circumstance like this person has gone to to prison, or there needs to be a separation in the relationship for whatever reason, or just because maybe that person isn’t sorry for it—you can’t reconcile— because that would take their cooperation in that reconciliation And we’re not in charge of that.

Edmund Mitchell:  Yeah. This is a hard one too. I’m thinking as we’re going through these—I’m thinking of all these different either parishioners or adult parishioners or high schoolers that have different stories that come to mind that I’ve encountered where people have struggled with a lot of these different things where they think that forgiveness..When we’re talking about “Jesus asks us to forgive” or “We also ask the Father to forgive us as we forgive others,” and then they’ll come in like, “Well, I’m not going to just forget that this happened.”

And that was one in particular—in high school ministry—that came up a lot where it’s like “Look, you’re not being called to forget that it happened.” That’s more on the side of this permissive end of the spectrum.

You also have a responsibility to take care of your life and your body and your emotions. And so you can’t go too far in the opposite extreme of, “Well, I’m going to forgive you, so we’ll just forget this ever happened.”

Like in a family, it’s part of the responsibility of the family to make sure that these things don’t happen again. So working together with someone to say, “Well, what can we both do? What can we request of each other? What are we willing to do in order to make sure this doesn’t happen again? And are we both willing to do that?”

Emily Mentock: Right. But if the other person isn’t willing, then that reconciliation might not happen until hopefully one day you both end up in full communion with God in heaven. So that—I think—is an important distinction. Another myth-busting that forgiving means reconciling.

That’s not true. Jesus commands us to forgive. In the Lord’s Prayer, we are saying “God, forgive us as we forgive.” We need to do that. That’s part of living a Christian life. But, reconciling is never commanded or an essential requirement for forgiveness because that requires the other person also being capable or willing to reconcile, and that might not happen—the Catechism makes very clear— until we are in heaven. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And this is a really hard one. There’s a lot of sensitive issues that come to mind for my own life. But if you’re in parish ministry or if you’re just a person, that’s hard because a lot of us might have family members or situations—delicate situations—where we have people who might be refusing to reconcile. Like they’re just “I’m not willing to even work on this.” They’re just like “No, I don’t want to work on this.”

And so I know from my own experience growing up, I had to learn the hard way because I went too far in the direction of, “Well, you always try to reconcile; you always try to find this forgiveness.” And I think you should be open to it—or you should definitely.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. We should pursue that. We should pursue reconciliation when we can. Absolutely. We’re not discouraging reconciliation, we just acknowledge that’s it’s not always possible. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And then that’s what’s hard is discerning for yourself. Like, have I done it? “Do I feel like I’ve done everything I can, and at what point am I exhausted past my ability to make reconciliation happen?” Or something. 

And so I’m thinking in particular about a lot of—I’ll just say it—a lot of broken marriages and families where you might teach on reconciliation, and then afterwards someone pulls you aside and just goes, “It sounds like you’re saying I need to reconcile so and so; my ex-husband. But I just can’t.”

And it’s a sensitive topic. I really want to just make sure as people are hearing this that these things are complicated and complex. These are relationships; these aren’t math equations. And it’s holding these things in tension.

Jesus is the great reconciler; His goal is to reconcile everyone. And so we try to live that way, but we also live in time and space, and we have to make decisions about who we spend time with and what are our limits, and what are other people willing to do?

And so it’s a complex tension. 

Emily Mentock: Yeah, absolutely. To say that reconciliation isn’t commanded doesn’t mean that trying it is not what we’re supposed to do, or that we’re off the hook for attempting to reconcile. 

And especially in the context of relationships—for the sake of the relationship— especially vocational ones like the family God has given you, or  between me and my husband, we should try to reconcile whatever situation is attached to the forgiveness we need to show each other, but I think the Catechism also makes clear that not you’re called to forgive everyone who hurts you, and you’re not necessarily in a relationship or in a healthy relationship. 

This again goes back to the conversation with Brya about when you have maybe toxic family relationships or trauma in your family, maybe— God forbid—an abusive situation or mental health issues that are impacting the situation. We are called to still forgive people in those relationships, but we can’t always reconcile with them.

It says in paragraph 2844, “Christian Prayer extends to the forgiveness of enemies.”

So maybe we have an enemy—in a way—some person who is really, really hurting us. And it might be completely out of our control to reconcile with that person. But forgiveness is what transforms our heart so we can receive God’s mercy in our own lives.

And forgiveness—according to the Catechism— “Forgiveness also bears witness that, in our world, love is stronger than sin.” So even when those people with whom reconciliation is either stalled or seems not possible, we are saying that in our world, love is stronger than sin. And certainly in heaven, that might be the place where that reconciliation finally happens.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And even I know for me personally, I had to learn that maybe reconciliation looks different. For me, it was really hard to accept the fact that something has changed; something has been irreparably changed by maybe a decision or someone else’s decision.

 And what’s coming to mind as you’re talking is reconciliation might look different because—like we said—we can’t forget what happened. 

Emily Mentock: Right. Exactly. It’s reconciliation, not restoration. Reconciling things to find peace and love again in that relationship—even if the relationship has changed—it’s not a restoration of the past relationship exactly as it was before. But, sometimes it is. Like, “Yeah let’s reset; let’s get back to what we had”—especially for small things. 

Another myth is that things that are too small don’t require forgiveness and true forgiveness in our hearts. That’s not true. “If I don’t truly forgive my husband each time he makes a little chore mistake, that will build into resentment.”

You have to work through that. Everything does require forgiveness, but it doesn’t mean that—especially for those big hurts; those deep wounds—that you have to restore the relationship back to what it was. It might mean reconciling with a different relationship moving forward that keeps both of you on a path to holiness.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And at the end of the day, I remember—I still have not been able to find this quote—but one of my pastors had said that “You know that forgiveness has happened—and you can choose it—when you are able to will the good of the other person.” That means you can choose what’s best for the other person.

So someone  calls you; checking on a reference for some person who’s wronged you in the past. And instead of choosing something to hurt them, or feeling a feeling of “I don’t want them to get ahead or whatever,” you can choose the good; you’re free to choose what’s best for them, or choose an action that’s good for them. 

You want what’s best for them. And in a way, maybe we say “Yeah, we’re open to reconciliation,” but we don’t have to necessarily make the relationship look the same. 

And I know there’s a lot of situations like that where it can be really hard to balance all those things. Man, we don’t want to make this whole episode about broken families and marriages, but I think that’s the one that comes up a lot where can you actually choose the good; will the good for the other person?

And that might not mean that the relationship looks the same as it did before. 

Emily Mentock: Yeah. No, that’s exactly right. That’s where the Catechism also talks a lot about compassion, And I think that something that I feel I’ve learned in my discipleship journey is that compassion—one of the good things about compassion is that it’s truthful; it’s seeing that other person for who they are—even in their hurt—so that you can will the good of the other. 

Here’s an example that comes to mind. I don’t know why this is coming to mind, but let’s say you’re in a relationship. And you guys keep crossing the line of not being chaste.You’re hurting someone else when you’re in that situation; you’re sinning against God because He commands us that sex is for marriage, but also you’re hurting the other person by going along that path with them. 

Now—out of compassion for that person and willing and good for them—it might be important for you to put up some boundaries in that relationship, or even end it—if this isn’t a relationship that’s leading you to holiness. And you need to forgive that person, of course—for whatever actions you guys did that were sinful, and how maybe that person led you to those sinful actions and you need—but you also need to—out of love for them—potentially step away from that.

That’s just for some reason the example that’s coming to mind. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah

Emily Mentock: But I think that compassion and reconciling the relationship in a different way, or with different boundaries, or with different actions in place, is part of what can lead to true forgiveness and to keeping that forgiveness and mercy going.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a valid example because in that example, I can think of high school teens where they’re struggling with falling into—let’s say sexual immorality or being unchaste. And then it’s like, “Well, do you want to stop that sin?” And they say, “Yeah, but every time with this person..” And then it’s like, “Well is the other person willing to work on that as well?”

And then that’s the other question too; if the other person is just like, “I don’t care. This is fine.” I think this would happen a lot where you’d have a high school teen who’s  dating someone and hoping they can change them or evangelize them. 

And it’s like, “This is out of your depth. You can’t both stop yourself from committing a sin that’s very tempting and also help them avoid doing this thing that they don’t feel is a sin at all.”

Emily Mentock: Right. 

Edmund Mitchell: And so it’s that balance between “Are you both willing to work on this?” and that dynamic of— I don’t want to paint sexual immorality as necessarily hurting the other person. You need to ask for their forgiveness, although that’s complicated.

Edmund Mitchell: But, I guess the thing that comes to mind is this cooperation with two people and being discerning “Is this other person cooperating with you?” And that was the hard thing for me in my life; was this person saying they want to cooperate, but I don’t know if that’s what’s actually happening; I don’t know if that’s what’s  going on.

Emily Mentock: Yeah, I can think of another— maybe this is an easier-to-approach example, but if I would fight with my sister about something—let’s say every time we were trying to get ready in the morning. This is back in high school; we were trying to get ready in the morning in the same bathroom at the same time, we would fight.

Now I’m not saying that’s a serious sin, but we were definitely not being charitable; not loving each other as Jesus was. And it was a horrible start to our day and just led to fights and escalation, whatever. 

So finally we figured out that somebody should just go to the other bathroom; the guest room bathroom, And okay, maybe it’s a bit of an inconvenience, but that change in behavior also allowed us to then have a good relationship.

So that’s so superficial and maybe shallow, but it’s hard to talk about those deeper wounds without needing to know the nuances of the situation. It’s just a way to understand that sometimes forgiveness comes from your heart. Reconciliation is also in your heart, but from your heart; a change in the external relationship person to person.

And that might look like needing to change the circumstances of that relationship so that you can truly love each other and will the good for each other moving forward. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Maybe we’ll go to this last myth. And then I have some practical things that are coming to mind that I’m having to resist jumping into.

Emily Mentock: Okay, yeah. We’lll ask for practical things. So last myth is accepting mercy means I’m weak or not wholly enough. Now I have to say Edmund, I definitely grew up with sort of the opposite perspective of “Serve justice, show no mercy;” that kind of side of things. 

So I’ve had to focus more on learning that forgiveness—well, I guess actually it’s still related to this too. I’ve had to learn that showing forgiveness and showing mercy—or accepting it—doesn’t mean weakness. And you sound like you’ve also had to learn that there’s a strength in showing mercy as well. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. What comes to mind is that we often treat other people the way we—deep down— internally treat ourselves. And you think of the fundamental attribution error. 

It’s the idea that when someone cuts you off in traffic, it’s because they’re spiteful and inconsiderate. But when you accidentally cut someone off in traffic, it’s because your life is hard and you’re busy, and you’re doing the best you can, and you’re not a bad person.

And so we fundamentally attribute the mistake to the person when there’s someone else. But then sometimes for us, they’re not attributed to who I really am. It’s a mistake; it’s an accident. 

And so it can be hard to accept mercy if we expect of ourselves to be perfect; if we have this image of ourselves or, we’re very strict on other people. It can be hard for us to accept mercy because we expect perfection in other people. 

It’s hard for us to accept that we’re not perfect; to accept “This was the best I could do. And if I accept mercy, that’s kind of admitting that I”—iit feels like we’re letting ourselves off the hook or something. 

And I’ve had moments in my life; in just friends’ lives, where they struggled with accepting the mercy. Actually, one of my kids struggles with this. He’s like, “Well, no, I, I deserve this” or “Don’t give me an easy pass on this.” He wants the justice for himself, and he has a hard time accepting.

 Just the other night I was like, “Well, no, this is a gift I’m giving to you. I know that this is all you deserve. But out of just a free choice. I want to give this extra to you.”

And the other thing is, we also don’t deserve the mercy. We don’t necessarily deserve it, it is a free gift. That’s what the love of God is, this free, undeserved gift.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. The only thing that makes us deserve it is that God shows us mercy. God shows us mercy, so we should show that person mercy. We should receive mercy because it’s God who’s showing it to us too. 

When I am doing at the end of the day an Examination of Conscience, or reflecting on my sins and asking God for forgiveness—not ones that need to go to Confession or things that I will later bring to Confession—but just at end of the day reflecting on where I’ve fallen short and asking God for His forgiveness.

I always pray, “God, I don’t deserve your forgiveness and I’ve sinned against you, except that I am your beloved daughter, so help me receive the mercy that I know I can count on you for.”

And so I think that—again, going back to “mercy is not weak”—one of the main things that helps us understand that is the Catechism makes clear we cannot receive God’s mercy if we are not showing it to others. And so we cannot receive forgiveness if we are not forgiving others. 

And so I think if you’re maybe a person who is having a hard time forgiving yourself, or showing mercy to yourself, or receiving God’s mercy in your life, maybe think about “Is there something in your heart that you’re holding onto; that you’re not forgiving someone else?”

And that might be why you’re having a hard time forgiving yourself. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. A thousand percent. As you were talking, I was thinking if you’re having a hard time accepting mercy, the question to take to prayer is: 

“Is there some place in my life where I’m refusing to give mercy, maybe to a family member or something. Or to a friend;  to a coworker? Is there a place in my life that I know I should extend mercy and forgiveness and I’m refusing, so therefore—in some other totally unrelated situation— I know that I don’t deserve this, and I kind of resist it; I don’t like to accept this God’s mercy.”

And in all of this, we should even say “What does it even mean to accept God’s mercy? What are we talking about?”

 And I think for people who struggle with this, they know that feeling of a closed-offness to God’s mercy. “I don’t need God’s mercy,  I do what’s right.”

And one thing I would encourage—to start getting practical— is this prayer: “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Emily Mentock: Yeah. 

Edmund Mitchell: Even if we don’t feel like we have big, guilty things in our lives, or no things weighing on our conscience, we are all sinners; we are all sinners in need of a Savior; we are all affected by sin. But for God’s grace, we’re in need of mercy always—I guess is what I’m realizing.

Even if you haven’t sinned, like you are in need of God’s mercy. 

Emily Mentock: Yeah, absolutely. And I love that little prayer. I remember learning it many, many, years ago at the start of my conversion back to the faith; back to practicing my faith. And it has been a great aid to me many times, especially because it’s addressed to Jesus. 

I can think of many times where I’ve sat in Adoration; struggling with something in my life—sometimes my own sin—and just prayed repeatedly. “Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” So definitely a great practical tip.

And then the next practical tip that we have for you guys is leading a Forgiveness Examen, which is not something I’ve ever heard of— teaching about the myths and forgiveness and mercy in small groups. So share more about that, Edmund. 

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Some of this is a combination of things I was taught in therapy with a Catholic counselor or Catholic therapist, but also with this idea of the Examen.

So the Examen is a structured way of going through a list. So it could be the 10 Commandments—there are other Examens too— it could be the Works of Mercy., but where you’re bringing your attention and saying, “Holy Spirit convict me of sin; convict my heart. Are there places where I have fallen short with these things?”

So one of the practical ideas is taking these myths and having the corresponding truths of the Gospel next to them. And then not just intellectualizing them or reading them, but taking them into prayer and asking God “God, where in my life—either with myself or with someone else—am I believing the myth and not believing the truth?”

And this practice that I had been taught was this combining exercise; a little bit of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s idea of meditation; using imagination and visualizing this idea. 

And so this was a very profound experience for me was imagining all of those feelings of unforgiveness, or hurt, or resentment, or whatever, and however you want to imagine that would look or visually look like coming out of you. 

What does that feel like, look like? How would you visualize that stuff? You feel it in your body; you feel those emotions. You imagine that coming out of you and going onto the Cross; putting that onto the Cross. 

And if you’re still feeling it afterwards, you just keep imagining that in prayer until eventually you’ve given all of that to Jesus, who took all of sin and evil and death onto Himself on the Cross.

And then this idea that when the Resurrection happened, we had the Shroud of Turin; this idea that there was this explosion of grace and light, and it even burned this image into this cloth; that there’s this explosion of this transformation of death and sin into the Resurrection.

And Jesus takes this sin and pain and suffering and evil, and He transforms it, and then turns that—in a way—into the Eucharist; into this gift of His Body; His resurrected Body that He gives us. 

And this person had walked me through this; this meditation of imagining that I receive the Eucharist that came from all of this suffering transformed by Christ, and then that Jesus gives the Eucharist to this person who’s my enemy—or this person who has hurt me—and gives it to my kids and my children; gives it to my parents, and transforming that 

And that practice, I had never had something that engaged my senses and emotions and intellect all together in the same way like this. In the past, it had always been an intellectual pursuit, and I just waited till my emotions followed, or waited till my prayer kind of made sense.

And that practice was really, really, really profound. I’m sorry that was too long of an explanation, but I think that’s something that you could easily walk people through—maybe at the end of a lesson or an end of a small group or Bible study. That could be really, really helpful.

Emily Mentock: Yeah, I’m so glad that you had that really powerful and profound experience, and I think it really sheds light on if we are struggling with forgiveness or receiving forgiveness from God, that offering that up to God in prayer and asking for Him to transform that hurt in your heart; that block in your heart that’s either keeping you from offering forgiveness, or keeping you from receiving God’s mercy on in your life, don’t be afraid. 

Don’t hesitate to ask God to transform that and to work through that. Continue to put an effort to work through that, the same way you might work through a relationship  that you are trying to reconcile, work through reconciling that relationship with God as well. 

So thank you so much for sharing about that powerful example. And if it’s helpful too, always go back to earlier parts of the Catechism. We talk about the forgiveness of sins and the Creed, we talk about Reconciliation, Confession, Sacraments. 

And now here we are talking again about in prayer, what it means to forgive, and how prayer and forgiveness are connected in the Lord’s Prayer.

So thank you so much for joining us for another episode of The Real + True Podcast, where we’re on a mission to unlock the beauty and truth of the Catechism and help people around the world encounter its pulsating heart: Jesus Christ. 

You can visit realtrue.org to watch or listen to any of our other episodes—as we’ve gone through now almost the entire Catechism—or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Have a great day!