{"id":517,"date":"2011-07-09T08:40:30","date_gmt":"2011-07-09T12:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=517"},"modified":"2012-01-08T08:32:38","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T13:32:38","slug":"forgivness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/forgivness\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forgiveness can be a difficult thing.\u00a0 It can be difficult to forgive someone when they do something that hurts us.\u00a0 It can also<\/em> be difficult to accept forgiveness that is offered to us after we have hurt someone.\u00a0 When someone tells us they forgive us, we might wonder if they really forgive us or if they are just saying it without meaning it.<\/p>\n

The first\u00a0 readings for daily Mass this week came from the Book of Genesis and tell us the story of Joseph in Egypt.\u00a0 If you remember the story, Joseph had been sold into slavery by his brothers who were jealous of him and wanted to get rid of him.\u00a0 Joseph arrives in Egypt as a slave but becomes a servant of the Pharaoh with great power.\u00a0 Joseph is wise and builds up stores of grains.\u00a0 When famine comes, people from all over come to ask for grain.\u00a0 Joseph’s brothers are among those who come to him.\u00a0 They do not recognize him but he immediately recognizes them but does not tell him who he is.\u00a0 Ultimately, Joseph tells them who he is and the whole family comes to live with him in Egypt.<\/p>\n

In today’s (7\/9\/11) reading<\/a>, their father Jacob (Israel)\u00a0dies.\u00a0 After burying him, the brothers are concerned that Joseph hasn’t really forgiven them and now that their father is dead, he will strike against them.\u00a0 Joseph assures them that he forgives them.\u00a0 They continue to live as a family.<\/p>\n

Scripture says a lot about our need to forgive others.\u00a0 If we want to be forgiven, we must offer the same to people who have hurt us.\u00a0 I don’t think scripture says much about how we might struggle to accept forgiveness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Many people think forgiveness means everything goes back to the way it was before the hurtful act.\u00a0 There is the great example of Joseph and his brothers coming back together as a family (note that even as they come back together, it is not exactly as before).\u00a0 It would be nice if this happened in every case but it doesn’t seem to be reality of our human relationships.\u00a0\u00a0I think here of the phrase “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”\u00a0 In my own life, I am aware of friends who have done something that has hurt me.\u00a0 I believe that they did not mean to hurt me.\u00a0 I offer my genuine forgiveness but at the same time I decide not to continue the friendship but it is not because of a particular act they have done.\u00a0 Rather, over time I was already beginning to wonder about continuing the friendship.\u00a0 The “hurtful act” simply becomes “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”<\/p>\n

In these cases, I truly do offer them my forgiveness for whatever they did that hurt me.\u00a0 But since I choose to stop being friends with them, they believe that I am still mad at them, don’t forgive them, and sometimes even think I hate them.\u00a0 That’s not true.\u00a0 It may not be perfect but my forgiveness is genuine.\u00a0 I do not hate them in any way.<\/p>\n

How do you struggle with forgiveness?<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forgiveness can be a difficult thing.\u00a0 It can be difficult to forgive someone when they do something that hurts us.\u00a0 It can also be difficult to accept forgiveness that is offered to us after we have hurt someone.\u00a0 When someone tells us they forgive us, we might wonder if they really forgive us or if …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Forgiveness’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[70],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-8l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}